Reference Footage and Planning

Over the holidays after completing my final animatic I prepared to record my reference footage for all the scenes with the creature present.  I first drew up a shot break down on a word document by listing up each scenes and the shots within them along with what happens in each shot.  Overall my film has five scenes forty eight shots.

I filmed the animatic and my brother kindly assisted me by being my model/actor.  Which filming I noticed more continuity errors that I will fix while animating, such as when the creature reaches her hand out to the light and cuts to a close up of the hand, it's the wrong hand.

This week I will test some dragonfly animating,  I originally planed to hand animate it but since moving it digitally on premier pro I think animating it on after effects as well as playing with the motion blur will be more effective.  Before I start to animate my scenes I will do some background layout planning first, otherwise I am at the risk of proportion and angle errors and therefore wasting valuable time.

Shaded Animatic

For my final animatic hand it, I decided to shade it so that I knew if people would have a much better understanding of the theme of the light against the dark.  It also helps me define what areas need work and that the character will stand out from the background.




The soundtrack is a rough cut by Jason Savory, who at this moment seems the most likely candidate for being the composer for my film.  I found him over the holidays through the university music society and therefore will have to arrange a meeting with him when I return to Newport to discuss exactly what I want and to go through the key moments of the film.

Storybeats and Colour research

When presenting my presentation to the class I showed some coloured storybeats, that gives a good idea what a finished frame will look like.  The criticism I got was that some frames are too dark and that all of them look generally muddy and there is too much brown.  I was suggested to add some other colours like perhaps purple.


As research I looked at existing forest backgrounds in animated films and some illustrations, more preferably at night.

These are some illustrations from various illustrators, some are a bit too abstract for my film, but the use of colour is interesting.




 The rest are either concept art specifically for an animated film or an actual background, mainly from Tarzan.

Concept art from jungle book

 

These too are the most helpful for me as they are dark and there isn't as much sun light present.  The night one is the most interesting as one of my big problems with my storybeats colour tests was that the night was too dark and just lots of browns and black.  But in Tarzan there are no browns or blacks at all, mainly blues, yet it still reads as a forest.  I will experiment with blues at night with my film.

Schedule and Budget

Schedule

To organise my timetable for next year I planned out a rough schedule and estimated how long it will take for each section of work for my film.  So far I am on track, my rough dissertation is handed in, my working life report is almost complete, so I can concentrate on finding a composer, and completing my detailed animatic and 30 seconds of feasibility tests. 

Budget


Looking at my budget, I have most of the equipment I need already.  But I have listed here what I have and need and how much the overall cost will come to:

Pencils (2B-3B)  -  £3.47
Tesco A4 white copier paper (75gsm)  -  £20
Masking Tape  -  £1
Post it notes  -  £2.50
Wacom Intuos 4 graphics tablet  -  £331

This is not including all that I already have and will use such as Adobe software and the lightbox.

Colour Scheme

Colour is something I have little experience in, which unfortunately for my film's readability it relies greatly on the colour and layout.  I have tried to do as much research as possible by looking at varied illustrations and background art on current films that is set in a forest environment.  I first set up a rough colour scheme of the film.  The beginning starts in blackness and at night therefore all very dark greens, then as the next days arises the greens get lighter until eventually turns to yellow then white.



With this, and knowing that my film is a journey from dark to light, and to help eliminate continuity errors and having a proper knowledge of what the creatures environment looks like: I set up the film's environment, and the more the creature makes her way up the pond the more lighter it gets.

Revised Character Sheets

Since I have tweaked my story since the last time I designed the character sheet for my creature, I have had to revisit it and although the overall design and style has not changed it's more the stance and attitude of the character that is incorrect.  At tutorials with Caroline and Leonie, both mentioned that my character could not have any poses with her legs open, as the audience could perceive this as being 'sexualised', which of course was not my intention, it was only because she is inspired by frogs.  Therefore I made sure her hair is not coving her back and overlapping most of her torso along with making sure she is hunched over and on all fours most of the films.

The Creature - Character Sheet

  

I then created a character sheet for the dragonfly, I wasn't 100% sure on the colour I just knew it had to be bright ans stand out from the background.  I was originally thinking red or orange but I didn't want the dragonfly to look dangerous, and yellow wouldn't have worked otherwise the dragonfly would have blended in with the light.  So I thought bright aqua blue would be a good colour for it.  The fact it's blue and the same colour as the creatures pond I thought would add another reason why she would be more mesmerized by it.

Dragonfly - Character Sheet

I then did one other character set up sheet, just to clarify what exactly makes my character tick.  And it will come in handy if someone else is animating my character. It's just a little more detailed that the character sheet really.

Rough Animatic 2 & New Script

Considering all my feedback and then seeing Leonie about my film and started my second animatic.  I was confident enough with the structure and basic story to leave the sticky notes and draw straight on paper.  I took on board all my feedback and applied what I thought would work best for my film and would be most appealing and understandable for my audience.

Storyboard:




I then scanned and edited together my Animatic.  I still have not applied and after effects movement or added proper shading to establish the darkness of her pond at the beginning along with defining the light beams shining from the tree canopy.  But this will all be applied for my final animatic, I will first gather more feedback and see if this animatic works and is readable.

 
Pond - Animatic 2 from Bryony Evans on Vimeo.

With this new animatic I noticed I had mainly been developing my story through my animatic and therefore did not have an actual script, so since Im relatively sure my story will not change much now I wrote up my new script.

Script 3:

A solitary pond creature lives her life in her still lonely pond, isolated from the outside world.  One night an almighty thunder storm strikes a tree overseeing her pond and a branch falls, the creature flees to the safety of the water.

The next day the creature awakens to find her pond is different.  For the first time ever a beam of light shines to the pond’s floor.  The creatures eyes burn at first at the strong beams.  Unknowingly the creature tests this alien form with a fern to see if it is dangerous, no harm to the fern so then reaches her hand out to the light and for the first time feels the warmth of the sun. 

Suddenly a crow flies overhead and scares the creature back into the darkness.  As she calms down she notices a small unfamiliar shadow from the leaves, she goes to see and witnesses a glorious dragonfly sitting on a leaf glistening in the sun.  The creature is mesmerized by the insect and slowly goes to approach it.  The dragonfly then whizzes off and swirls around the creatures head, playfully she follows the dragonfly until it flies off into the sunlight and into the unknown forest where the creature has never set foot before.  The creature at first is scared to go any further but then sees how the dragonfly just lives it life and is much more happy in the few seconds of seeing it that all her days of being in her pond.  

She slowly starts to follow until she noticed her ankle is tied up in a lily pad vein.  She looks back at her only home thinking this is all she’s ever known and is scared of the unknown past the barrier of trees around her pond.  Then with a swift of courage and excitement she pulls on the vein and it snaps.  She climb over the fallen tree and embraces the light and explores the big wide open world.




This is what I am going to give in for my film proposal deadline in a week.  If all goes to plan I can just concentrate on animation tests, finding a composer and dissertation writing over the holidays.