amanda

During our previous weekly production feedback session with Derek and Nick, I also tried combining the wave test shot onto the stop motion background and this was what we ended up with:



We gathered that stop-motion sets were probably not the wise way to go as the sets didn't look like they were uniform in a sense that when looking at real life sandcastles, the castle and the sand from the beach would be joined together rather than be two separate things. So, us as a team had to choose whether to stick with whatever we had at the moment or to go completely 2D.

After some discussions, weighing the pros and cons of both sides, and also adding in the factor that we only had about 3-4 weeks to complete the entire film, we decided to do it all in 2D after Ting (Director) did some tests of 2D backgrounds to see if it worked.

We did some tests to see if the backgrounds and characters would blend well together and this was what we ended up with:

Character line-up.
We also changed the style of colouring for the wave to make it into blocks of colours rather than colouring it by brush which made it very odd with all the very different styles of brush. This style also made sure that we opted out the blurriness that can clearly be seen in the previous test shots. This is one of the shots we have completed, and it also shows the style that we aim to go for, for the entire film.




A few other test shots of our water animations:










So far, the entire production seems to be going in a perfectly good direction that all team members are happy with. I think when it came to deciding to do it in a hybrid animation style, everyone had their doubts, but thankfully we tried it. Although it didn't pan out like we hoped it would have, at least now we're on the right track. Like people always say: no harm giving it a go!

As our ShelterBox idea involved making a hybrid between stop-motion and 2D, Ting and I started building the set for our short film. We decided to make the sandcastles with clay and coat it with sand for the 'houses' and draw 2D windows & doors on it. For the beach setting, we stuck with the idea of painting cardboard for the skies and doing paper mâché for the base of the sandy beach and covered it with sand afterwards.

For the sandcastles, the process of making it went like that:

Step 1: Roll out a ball of aluminium foil and leave it aside. (To use less clay & make sure the sandcastle is lightweight)

Step 2: Roll a chunk of clay into a ball.

Step 3: Flatten the ball of clay out, like you're making a dumpling! Place the ball of aluminium foil in the centre and knead the clay around the foil, making sure that it's concealed, until it looks like a potato.

Step 4 **if necessary!: Roll out clay to add around the base of the potato to make it into a sandcastle shaped building.

Step 5: Adding the castle indentations by using an x-acto knife to mark the groves and then cut it out one by one. Next, we needed to make the damaged sandcastles to show the aftermath of the tsunami.

Do exactly what has been done to the normal sandcastles, except that after it's partially dry, pull apart little chunks from different sections of the sandcastle, stretch it a little, bend it a little and add in the indentations.

Completed pieces!

After they're covered in sand.

Layering for the sandy beach setting with cardboard and PVA glue and a touch of sand.

Ting (Director) painting the background setting.

We realised that our setup was too small to just locate everything properly but here goes:





We took all the photos needed for all our shots as we've already established how they were all going to look like. Here are just some of it:




I know we could have done better for the sets and all, and I wished we did. Overall I wasn't satisfied with these despite all the hard work put into it. Let's just hope it blends in with our 2D animation.

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).