amanda

One of the major issues that we had as a team on starting the ShelterBox film was all the water animation that we had to do. We've all not animated water before and it was proven to be a difficult task. We did our research and looked from subtle wave references to tsunami crashing references. It went from looking at Ponyo (by Studio Ghibli) to Moana to CG animated tsunami references. We broke it down to part by part and realised that the best way to 'sell' the wave shot was the colours.

After deciding that we were gonna give that approach a try, Kuan (head of effects animation for the film) starting doing a test shot of a front view of a wave crashing and that I were to colour it as I was the head colourist of the film.

Kuan did a fantastic job in doing the lined shot. I, however, had some difficulties with colouring the shot as I could not figure out what sort of brush to use. But anyway, here goes.



For the first test shot, I used the 2B pencil brush to fill in the main wave colours and the airbrush tool to colour in the foam bit. It ended up with this blurry kind of feel which Derek had pointed out. And so, I tried again:


I added in more strokes to the foam bit to add more of a detailed pattern to it. Although it was accepted, I still wasn't satisfied with it at all.

But until the next trial, I'm going to have to figure out some stuff about it. Back to the books!

Following up from the script & beats breakdown from the previous post that you can read here, we aimed to get the animatic completed within a week in order to quicken the pace of production. Over the weekend I started animating my last part of the beats whereby the villagers get together and push the ShelterBox boxes together and have a meal.




After compiling everyone's parts together and presenting it to Derek and Nick, we were on the right track of production. It definitely was a huge relief once this part of production was done. Derek made a point of making the animatic a more 'uniform' piece to be presented to Danny, the representative of ShelterBox, and not show an animatic with like 5 different art styles in it.

We sorted out the styles (thanks to Kuan and Ting) and finally got the finalised animatic completed. My part had a massive change due to the fact that we realised we didn't need to flip the boxes upside down to make it into a huge table, when we could just use it the right side up. We also fixed the ending scene to make it more of a dynamic shot so that it blends in with the ending scene where the ShelterBox logo pops up.




And there we go! Animatic is done- now onwards to the animation part of things.

After a few weeks into pre-production, we were told to create our own mini-pitch with storylines we have created with the several workshops that we have had throughout the first few weeks of the first term. We were also expected to use our given artist's (in my case, it was Lorenzo Mattotti) style in this pitch.

I had two storylines, the first one was created in a writing workshop with James Henry. The whole storyline created in that workshop could have filled out a possible full fledged 2 hour movie or 2 seasons of a particular cartoon series. It was all twists and turns, and it got my head just spinning thinking of it.

Another storyline that we picked up was in a workshop with Derek, Andy & Kathy. They gave us picture cards, and we could pick any item that they've laid out on the table. My team received these three cards, and we picked a fork.

Chosen item with three given cards.

The plot of my mini-pitch was: A footballer that became seriously injured after a football match. After being told that he could never be a footballer like before again, he started pursuing his lifelong dream of becoming a chef (and became a good one at that).

This is the "wow" image that I came up with for this mini-pitch.

"Wow" image for mini-pitch: 'FoodBall'.
Aaaaaand, here's a slice of the animatic (with sound):



The feedback that I've gotten back was that it reminded Derek of Gordon Ramsay. Although my mini-pitch did not get picked in the end, it was a great experience all around!

Ultimately, after sorting out the character sheets, we sat down as a group and finalised the outline for the story. Our main script is shown below:


Finalised script for ShelterBox.
After that, we made a rough outline of the beats of the script, to break down the storyline into even more details.


Rough beats for ShelterBox.
From there, we split up the beats into even number of parts for everyone to do the animatic. We didn't want one person to do the entire animatic as we had other tasks to do as well, and it was also for everyone to know how to pick up the continuation process of the film. At this point in time, we had another member join our group and it was Ross!

This term, we were given an opportunity to work with a client for a live brief. The two options that were given to us were a brief with ShelterBox and a Space Brief. Ultimately I leaned towards ShelterBox- because one: it's an amazing non-profit organisation, two: it's a versatile project. I didn't particularly have an interest for the space brief as the brief itself stated that it required a lot of precision and accuracy in the subject, and it also leaned towards a big chunk of 3D which I wasn't ready to take on. At the end of the project briefing with a representative of ShelterBox, it became clear that I wanted to pick this brief a lot more than the other one.

ShelterBox: for more info, please visit their website here.

I ended up being grouped together with Ting, Kuan, Margarita and also Johana. During our first meeting, we started out with deciding to go towards a narrative approach for the project. Ting took on the director role and I took on the producer role.

Our main concept was to produce a hybrid animation piece, merging 2D and stop-motion together. We wanted to have a stop-motion background/stills with 2D characters on it. The setting of our story was the beach with toys as our main characters. We had everyone go back and do some sketches of some toys that they came up with which would then be included in the animation. We also had everyone practice drawing the main family which was originally done by Kuan.



Pigeon character (designed & drawn by me).

Mr. A (designed & drawn by me).

For this year, I chose to go through with the pre-production route of the course. During our introduction class to the pre-production module, we had Andy, Derek & Kathy there in the room, giving us a short talk each. At the end of the session, they split us into twos and gave every duo an artist that we have to study on. What they wanted us to do was to study the art styles of the artist given to us and try to adapt to it as in animation, there is no such thing as one static style forever. Sometimes we'd need to adapt to another animator's style. This exercise in turn helps us loosen up and make sure we work a little out of our comfort zone.

I received Lorenzo Mattotti as my artist. The first thing that came to my mind was that my artist was definitely Italian. I didn't know any of his work, but after searching for him online, I was intrigued at the his art style and couldn't wait to mimic it. Mattotti often uses pastels in his artwork, giving it a grainy texture. I tried replicating it with colour pencils but unfortunately, that didn't work out well.

Some of Lorenzo Mattotti's illustrations playing with a variety of colours.
Some of Lorenzo Mattotti's illustrations in ink on paper.
Mattotti is a very versatile artist, constantly playing with shape, colour, light and also lines. He manages to convey emotions into every line that he draws. I tried copying it but I have yet to try it digitally.



Until the next task, then!

Second year of university has begun for me and on the first day itself, we had a briefing known as 'The Rush Job'. Before the day started, my peers and I heard of horrible stories of having to spin out an entire completed animatic in 3 days for this particular brief. That sort of terrified me a little, as knowing my skills in animating- 3 days... it's definitely not enough.

When the briefing came around, it turns out that we were going to create a Christmas advert for Benjamin Cook in a week. I think the idea for this briefing was to help us start a mini collaboration with the Film and also the Television students. I was grouped with Hamish, Emma and Alex from Animation & VFX with Georgia, Lydia and Jack from Film/TV.

Briefing of 'The Rush Job'.
From there we discussed a storyline we decided to go with and distributed out the tasks. Hamish took on the task of making the animatic, Emma and Alex were helping with concepts, Georgia and Lydia were in charge of the script and also audio, while Jack was just filming the process of the entire production. I was appointed the job of the director/producer, overlooking the entire production.

After reading the script that was sent to us that day itself, it was clear that us Animation & VFX students and the Film/TV students were not on the same page on the vision that we pictured and discussed. However, after a few revisions, we managed to pull through and started the animations.

Here's our final animatic:


Despite the little hiccups, it was fun to be able to collaborate with the Film/TV students for a change and get to know how indifferent it is to be working with people across departments. It also helped in getting ourselves ready for another intensive term of animating. Without a doubt, I was happy with the group I was placed in. Everyone worked well together and was very productive with every task they were put to. I wouldn't mind working with them all again. 'The Rush Job' was an incredible experience, especially with Ann & Kathy doing a little act!

(Left-Right): Kathy, Ann & Derek.