A represnetive from the Trust had come in to see our process and also to see if anything needed to be changed from the original. I prepared a showcase of the assets we had currently made, though they had not be composited together just yet. Aishling, the representative, like what we had done so far, however she encouraged us to add additional animations on the rightside of the house and to maybe also add an opening as the animation began to suddenly.
Having taken the advice give to me during the last presentation, I changed various parts of the story to allow it to flow easier. The key difference was the opening, where the mother is calling up the babysitting helpline and grows annoyed with her child. The original saw the child throw it's pacifier at the mother, blinding her and causing her to press the wrong button. One opening that was suggested was the mother holds the child and he vomits on her, causing her to follow the same course of action and would jump straight to the zombie entering as the mother hand him the child and rushes out the door still covered in the vomit. Though it is funny, this scene would have simply thrown off the pacing of the rest of the animation. However, I did change the scene so that the mother is in the kitchen as the child cries at the table, not wanting to eat his dinner. The child throws the hot food at the mother and thus burns her, making her unable to see.
Character design references;
The character design for the zombie changed numerous times, going from a traditional ghoul-like creature to overly bizarre creatures such as a monster with just a mouth.
(Early concept art of the zombie.)
I started to look at the work of Jamie Hewlett, a comic artist known for Tank Girl and his part in creating the fictional characters for the Gorillaz, designs that I looked into.
(Images done by Jamie Hewlett, characters of the Gorilliaz.)
The characters that embody the real-life members of the band have an angular style, similar to the style i wish to develop in my own animation. The characters resemble rather ghoulish creatures in their design that I wanted to try.
(The most recent designs for the zombie)
Saturday, 9 December 2017
Background References
(Taken from Pinterest; an early reference for the house)
(References for the bedroom environment)
(Reference for the kitchen layout; I may incorporate a change in composition similar to the bottom one)
In Adobe Affects, I started by testing the text animation where I physically drew it with the pen tools, adding the texture over it and alpha-channeling so it appeared within the writing. After that I tested the animation with pre-generated text, applying the texture the same way and testing out the trucking animation tools.
My part in the actual animation of the project was to design and animate the text that would be used in the final piece. I wanted something simple in design so as not to take away from the visual animation; text that would be easy to read in the short amount of time yet still be part of the animation style. I looked into 3D styles of text but ultimately stuck to the flat, cartoon-like text to once again follow the same style as the visual animation.
In addition to my own animation, roughly titled 'Baby Troubles', I chose the 2012 computer-animated film Wreck-It Ralph from Walt Disney Animation Studios to use as an example as due to the similarities it held to my original animation in terms of the stages of the narrative method, the Hero's Journey.
Call to Adventure
For Ralph, his call to adventure comes from the loneliness he feels as he is often excluded from the activities the other residences of his game hold in honour for Felix, the 'good guy' of his game. Ralph is urged his call when he decides he want's to be a good guy.
Herald
The Herald for Ralph, the person who taunts him into going after a medal, us Gene, the hotel manager. He says if Ralph can find a Medal, he'll be allowed to stay in the penthouse.
Refusal of the Call
Ralph does not refuse his call, he gladly leaves his own game to search out the object of his desire, the Medal that he believes will make him appear to be a good guy, a hero.
Ordeal
After all his trails, after gaining allies and enemies and getting over many thresholds, Ralph is faced with his main Ordeal; destroy the cart he can Vanellope worked to create in return for his medal.
I began researching continuous line effects to influence the creative process, looking at various ways to form the line, from intricate weaving patterns that overlap to a more simplistic style where the line does not touch at all. For colour palettes, I looked at mute tones for the background while the animation and text would be brighter, bolder, to stand out more.
