Production// Voice recording

Recording from a basement

Today I recorded the main characters voice, earlier in the week I'd recording two other secondary characters so I was already familiar with the set up and software. I've been recording from a small basement in Hyde Park on the software 'REEPER' which is a free software that I highly recommend, even as someone who isn't musical and will most likely never will be. The set up involved a mic stand, opposite a wall covered by a vintage 1960's curtain I'd hung up to reduce he recordings bouncing off objects surrounding the mic.

A big thank you to James Grimshaw for providing me with his set up; including a computer with software, a Focusrite interface, a long cord, a mic and a pair of headphones. He also helped me understand the software basics, such as making sure the levels were okay and how to record on different channels. I ended up imagining the software was a lot like photoshop in order to get my head around it quicker (I'm talking about the thing with layers).

How recording went

I approached each recording with each line having a rough 'playing time'. I had to do this because I had already begun animating from an animatic, that wasn't made to any recordings. So certain lines had to be within a certain time limit in order to fit in a certain shot. Recording line by line, I spoke to each voice actor about how I wanted the character to sound/how they could sound in the situation they were in - I found this was a good way of doing it, so kept doing it. I hadn't recorded outside of university before so this was a bit stressful, but soon I felt very much at home with the software and recording process.  With certain lines, I had to change them within the recording session because the original recording sounded too rushed to sound natural.

Wait, I should of done this way sooner.

Because of health problems I've lot about 4 weeks on this project, which is massive. It's effected every part of this project and I'm currently working 11hours straight daily in order to make up for lost time and finally I'm back on track. I'm still due to record three more voices, including two characters who are on screen and I need recordings before I can animate those scenes as they involve speaking animation. 

Pre-production// Character developments

Introduction

'A Fox Wants To Play Guitar' features several anthropomorphic animals living in a multicultural Northern city in Britain, the main character being a musical fox named 'Benjamin'. The film also features an albino hedgehog named 'Clover' and an events runner badger named 'Harry'. I began writing this story with the idea of representing minorities within the art industry with Benjamin, who was fighting against the stereotype against foxes that all they do is scream and make a mess in order to promote his own musical career as a 'softly singing fox'. Although I wanted to represent the struggles against stenotypes from minorities, depicting minorities as anthropomorphic animals is a hugely negative stereotype within itself as it portrays these minorities as non-human which is hugely offensive. I there for included diverse background characters and secondary characters in order to promote a multicultural city, portraying characters such as Benjamin as fighters against their false stenotypes and not the only representatives of minorities groups.

Main Characters

Benjamin began as a doodle of a musical friend, that then sparked an idea in my head. After a month of development I've even become deeply attached to Benjamin, more so than any other character I've designed previously. Benjamin is a 20-something southern Fox that lives up in the North of Britain where he's chasing his dream of becoming a musician. Benjamin struggles with the stereotyping of foxes just being interested in screaming and as a result, this stereotype is blocking his path to achieving his goals. I wanted Benjamin to look small within the world around him, however I also wanted everything to look very personal and up in his face. So I designed him to look very neat, almost condensed; his body is basically a sausage with noodle arms and legs,. His clothes don't hang from his body they hug him, making him look smaller by himself and not just in an environment that already towers above him. I also wanted Benjamin to look self conscious, so I kept his design very sleek and smooth rather than saggy - like having saggy non-neat looking clothes, like a hoodie or over sized jumper.

Clover is an albino hedgehog who enjoys loud music and plays an electric guitar. Clover acts as a reminder of Benjamin's own assumptions and prejudices of others based because of their identity. Clover is tiny compared to other characters and is the smallest character in the film. I wanted her to look 'swamped' by her clothes, but not in a way that would 'swamp' the character and visually look like it was holding her back. I decided to give Clover a scarf, which is very non-threatening looking over a yellow raincoat that fitted her well. The scarf is the only thing that doesn't fit her, however doesn't look out of place in a Northern city. Clover is also shaped like an egg and unlike other characters, her mouth is on her nose. I found it quite difficult at first to storyboard this, purely because her nose had to be at a good angle to see her mouth moving - but that adds to the character seeming small and quite, as her mouth is so small.

Harry owns the 'softer things' venus that Benjamin attends. Harry is the first character to ask Benjamin for his name. Although early concepts of Harry include him smoking and drinking it only clicked in my head that those things should not be promoted to children - and the animation being aimed a younger audience, meant Harry had to give up the smokes and drink. I designed Harry to begin with to be bigger and broader than Benjamin, but approachable. I kept Harrys design curvy, more friendly looking as well as keeping his colours blue, pink and purple - as pink is seen as a comforting colour in this film and is the basic colour of the venus Benjamin finds a home within. Harrys character had his screen time dramatically reduced, because of the film having to be shortened.

Rebecca Rose is the first interviewer shown in the film. I her introduction as 'Despite originally being free spirited and ‘cool’, years working behind a desk doing what managers do have turned her once-free nature into a patronising smile, complete with lifted brows.' I honestly love her character. 

Background Characters

I designed a large number of diverse human characters for this film in order to properly represent a multicultural city. I also designed a number of background animal characters, so there were more than 3 in the film.

Pre-Production// Storyboarding, making an animatic and the colour script

Colour Scripts

I began storyboarding 'A Fox Wants To Play Guitar' slightly late into the project, after spending the majority of pre-production of character design and visual development. I also struggled at first to begin storyboarding (as I always do) because projects always seem endless to me even if I've written everything myself. I researched Colour Scripts for the first time, something I'd seen from different concept art books before especially Pixar art books. A colour script is a storyboard-like series of illustrations that focuses on key moments in the script and represents them visually, focusing on colour themes to bring across the mood/impact of the moment.

Example of colour script developed for 'The Incredibles' (Pixar)

Scene 3 rough storyboard

Colours Scripts developed in pre-production

After working on colour scripts I then took straight to the animatic. I drew each frame as a storyboard before setting it into an animatic, both using photoshop. The majority of the animatic(s) have key characters coloured, in order to get an idea of placement better.

Animatic(s), cutting the time of the film in half

I used Photoshop to create the animatic. Using the timeline function within the software I used multiple layers to add characters, colours, backgrounds and to apply depth. Applying depth to give an idea of how 'deep' a shot is isn't something I'd included in any of my previous storyboards/animatics and had only picked up on from reading concept and pre-production blogs and books from other animators/animation studios. For example this progress reel I found from an animation student from Calarts.

After finishing the first animatic to a level I was happy with I rushed to begin animating and after completing 8seconds of finished film in two weeks I began to realise I would have to dramatically cut the animatic down to a much smaller size that was still effective, got the script across well and saved me time. Here are both animatics, animatic 2 being the final version. I then went on to change certain shots to run for a longer or shorter time, when filling in recorded dialogue for the film.

Version 1

Version 2