Documentary Animation// Scene 2 done

Tonight I finished the second sequence for the animated documentary I'm working in with two others. for this segment I moved away slightly from the storyboard, because I felt that the pacing of the sequence was a little too static and didn't run particularly well with the narratives pacing. I added in Shot3, a shot of the characters eye moving; to fill in the space where the narrative takes a hesitate breath. I really wanted to emphasise the sinister belly of the narratives wording. Before doing any of this I checked with both the director for this animation and the second member (our background artist) if it was alright to drop in the new shot on my own and not keep to the storyboard. 

Shot1

Shot2

Shot3(added)

Layout for character

Frames into layers

Responsive Group Work// Presentation work

I took the lead with putting the presentation for this contest brief.
With help from Emily I organised into 8 slides the work we put into this brief together and the reasonings behind our final outcome. Below are images of each slide in our presentation:

Documentary Animation// First scene finished!

Below is the final render of the first clip of animation I was assigned to animate.
Our background artist for this project has also animated the backgrounds, in a sort of 'graphic slideshow' style. The animation time on the background segments sliding in was a little over the assigned time for the clip, so I've cut the background animation down slightly at the start, in order to sit in the 'stand still' moment in his work.

Documentary Animation// Finishing off the first character animation

Above is a rendered out work in progress of the first scene I've been working with for this project. I've loosely sketched where the characters of the mother and father will do with very rough messy shapes behind the animated kitten, which has helped me when animating the kittens gestures and looks towards each parent. I also animated this to the narrative, so the glances would work with each introduction of 'with my mum' - ' and my dad'.

Responsive Group Work// Social media

Above are examples of how on social network the animated versions of our illustrated posters would look under the hashtag 'getamnesty', for this I used twitter and Tumblr as examples. Not only this, but Amnesty could advertise themselves on the 'advert' segments of social media rather than just hashtags.

Responsive Group work// Adding text/icon and keyframe screenshots

Above are the 4 posters in their animated versions (gifs) that both Emily and I have created. Emily created lettering traditionally with a brush pen and then scanned into photoshop to then add our slogans onto each flyer, originally this job was meant to be taken care of by our third member but we haven't heard anything back from her. I also added in the AMNEST logo as well as our hashtag, which was something we had let slip up until now. We're both very pleased with the final results of our project and we'll submit these entries tomorrow.  (Below are two screenshots of the photoshop work place I set up to animate these illustrations including the layers keyframes)

Conversation between me and Emily about her designing the text

Responsive Group Work// Finishing off GIFS and working on the presentation

 I've continued to convert the still illustrations from Emily into moving gifs today, below are the animated gifs of the posters we're producing for this Amnesty brief. We have yet to add text and the Amnesty icon, which I'll add and animate once the text has been produced.

I'm also working on our presentation to go with these 4 animated/illustrated submissions (screen shots below) I wanted to keep the wording on the presentation respectful and as professional as possible, which isn't something I've really had to do before...

We have yet to include our slogans because our Graphic designer Poppy has yet to get back to us about when/how they are to be created. We're also still developing a hashtag.

Responsive Group Work// More Animated Gifs!

Here is another gif'ed illustration for this project, which Emily illustrated and I animated on photoshop. I used the timeline tool on the software and set keyframes with different elements of the image, then set them to move fluidly against one another. These animated Gifs have yet to be created with a slogan (which we're still in contact with our graphic designer Poppy about creation) and the hashtag that's requested for this breif also.

Responsive Group Work// Animating

Emily finished the first illustration for our 'handout' posters today and after scanning it into photoshop and separating certain segments of the image (like the characters arms) she send over the photoshop files, with layers, for me to begin animating. I made the animation very simplistic and set the keyframes with 'keyframes' in the timeline tool in photoshop. I made sure that after the movement the animation would return to it's standing position, posed identical to a physical copy of itself.

Here is a rendered GIF of the first handout animation I've completed. We are yet to add graphic text and will do so as soon as possible.

(screenshot of timeline with keyframes)

Responsive Group Work// The deadline is coming

My team and I didn't start engaging with out idea for the contest till extremely close to the deadline. We'd planned to meet up as a team of three but never physically carried the idea further then facebook messenger.

Me and Emily met up last week to discuss our battle plan for this contest.
We'd already outlined our rough idea which had been approached carefully with a few false starts. Emily came up with the idea to make posters that were animated gifs online and could be used on social media as either (or both). Our group loved this idea and we began to developed it. I focused on researching what the organisation targets and Emily researched the ways the organisation approaches their targets.

I made an image boards of the current 'issues' the group is targeting (which is pictured below);

The images shown are depict a variety of issues including human rights and social rights. But I thought these images were very graphic and considering this contest is about connecting with young people and encouraging them to joint the organisation rather then shocking them with issues; I thought it would be best to focus on the positive actions the organisation does to help support/help such movements as pictured above.  I pitched to Emily that we should focus on the ways young people can help within the organisation, such as handing out educational flyers that raise awareness or raising money. We wanted a positive approach to the people that support the organisation and in turn support the issues.

A few days ago myself and Emily met up within the university to discuss our approach to this in person. She'd researched into the ways backers could support the organisation or get involved themselves and using that information we sketched up 4 basic ideas. These ideas depict young people supporting the organisation by taking back in joining groups, attending meet ups, signing up and education. Emily is currently working on producing these ideas into physical illustrations which I will later put into photoshop and animate simplistically into a Gif format.  

Documentary Animation// Animation WIP

Above is the first small segment of animation I've attempted for this project, which I've converted into a repeating GIF file. This is the longest segment of animation I've produced with the 'brush-texture-technique' and I'm glad it turned out looking good! For this project we decided on a 'jittery' effect to the animation, without line but with colourful shapes; this animation is rendered out at 24fps but is 'jittering' at 12fps.

Documentary Animation// Updated animatic and assigned segments for animation

Above is the animatic I requested my director James beardsell developed in order for me to understand which segments assigned for me to animate. Such segments are indicted as mine with the green box. No gestures for movement are shown within the animatic besides basic placements of characters on screen, which I find a little inconvenient but I'll simply animate the segments how I assume they should be animated.