The Other Side, Preproduction

Mood boards I created to help me with designs for my story concept which will contain monsters and a sandy wasteland:

- Monster mood board

- Desert/Wasteland mood board

Story Concept:

I started of linking the title 'The Other Side' with multiple concepts such as separation, future, another world, etc. Through this I decided to focus on the concept of a dream world which has the main character question his reality. This is due to his dreams feeling too real and having a physical effect on his normal human body. I want this to relate to how most people, when asleep, can't tell that their dreams aren't reality.


Without context I hope this makes the audience at least perceive that my main character is experiencing two different worlds, i.e. when he is on Earth and the world he visits when he falls asleep. Also, how they interpret it as 'The Other Side', e.g. a world on the other side of the galaxy.





Character and Monsters concept designs:



The main character he two different forms. his normal human form when he is awake and his monster form when he is asleep. On the left are my concepts of how I want his different forms to appear.



For the monsters I wanted them to appear twisted and/or bizarre hence the choice of images for my monster mood board. The board consists of creatures from Berserk, Parasyte, One Punch Man and an artist called Don Ken. On the left are my concepts of how I wanted the monsters that appear in my story to look.

My Animatic:

Photography Induction

Photos I took experimenting with different settings:

- Slow Shutter Speed

- Fast Shutter Speed

Apply, Robo Love

 

My complete Apply video depicting the concept of love

Pendulum

12 Principles of Animation

Why 12 Principles of Animation?

The principles reflect Frank Thomas' and Ollie Johnston's desire to make the way Disney animations moved and express character and emotions look more real.

12 Principles of animation:

1. Squash and Stretch -  allows an animator to create the illusion of weight and volume of an object. How extreme the squash and stretch is dependent on what you are animating.

2. Anticipation - communicates what is going to happen. Put anticipation within the movement of a character or object before a major action.

3. Staging - the presentation of an idea clearly communicated to the audience. Communicates the attitude or emotional state of a character or object within a story. Directs attention to the ideas or story being told.

4. Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose Animation - different ways of animating which can give different results. Straight Ahead animation is animating frame after frame without using keyframing. If not careful can end up losing the sense of scale, size and volume. Pose to Pose animation is carefully planned and the animator works out what key poses will be needed to make an animation work. 'in between' frames are done by an assistant. Allows animator to focus on the key poses allowing control over the movement and performance of the animation.

5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action - happens when the body of an object or character has stopped moving. With Follow Through nothing stops all at once such as long hair, a tail, loose clothes, etc.

Overlapping Action is when an object or character changes direction and their clothes, hair, etc. continue forward. This gives the sense of looseness.

6. Slow-Out and Slow-In - an action which starts with more drawings at the beginning at the start of the pose, few in the middle and more drawings near the end. Fewer drawings create faster actions, more drawings create slower actions.

7. Arcs - actions, except some mechanical ones, follow an arc or circular path. Human figure and animals tend to follow arcs. They make animations flow making them feel more natural.

8. Secondary Action - supports and reinforces the intentions of the first. Gives more meaning.

9. Timing - requires you to try again, refine and try again. Practice makes perfect. Mixture of slow and fast timing adds texture and interest to the movement. Think about the timing of the character performing to establish things like mood, emotions and reactions to a person or situation. For the best possible animation you need to study life (e.g. actors, performers, animals).

10. Exaggeration - instead of bigger, faster and broader exaggeration to characterisation of expressions, poses and facial features. Exaggeration in a walk, head turn or eye movement can make your animation more appealing.

11. Solid Drawing - basic principles of drawing form, weight, volume solidity and the illusion of 3D apply to animation. Creating the illusion of life within a character or object.

12. Appeal or character Personality - appeal creates an emotional connection between character and audience. A well developed character with an interesting personality and a clear set of desires or needs that drives his/her behaviour and actions. Character must have a pleasing design, have a certain charm, magnetism and be able to communicate it well. Same with villains otherwise there will be no interest in what they are doing.

One Piece, Monkey D Luffy

 Monkey D Luffy is a pirate captain on a quest to become pirate king and is a character design I adore. Most of the time he posses a jolly and silly (almost childish) personality which shows through how he is animated. His simplistic face with big eyes makes him look young and childlike which goes well with his happy and carefree attitude. He also posses rubber powers, after eating what is called a Devil Fruit, which goes well with his silly and funny personality as he does a series of actions which involve him stretching, inflating and being squashed. However, say or do something threating especially towards his own friends and his anger will be the end of you. Luffy changes to a more serious and violent character when his or his own friends' life is in danger, yet his funny childlike face can change to show a more serious expression really well. The simplicity of his face can provide him to show a variety of emotions. He is also drawn wearing brightly coloured clothing to make him appear pleasant for even a child audience (however the series does contain mature language, scenes with large amounts of blood and has mild sexual humour).



First appearance of Luffy being goofy and demonstrating his rubber powers in the middle of fighting a pirate crew.

 These are examples of Luffy looking angry and how far his anger will make him do:

Luffy getting involved in a big war between the Fleet Admiral's forces and a Pirate Emperor's forces all to save his brother from execution.

Luffy fighting an agent of a World Government organization, potentially declaring war on the world, all to save one friend from being imprisoned.







I am inspired by what he represents/the ideal behind him which is to following your dreams even if it doesn't end well. His direct quote to this is "If I die trying at least I tried", implying that it's worth his life and he will at least try instead of give up and regret it later.

Berserk, Guts the Black Swordsman

Guts the Black Swordsman is one of the most intense and vicious characters I have ever known of. His face has a very masculine look about him and what definitely makes him look mean and scary is his eyes when he puts on a serious expression, which is most of the time. Well when he had two eyes, one got gouged out by one of the many demons he fought of and cut off his own arm all on the same day. For this dark character he needs a dark outfit, he usually wears black armour and black cloak to make him look mysterious and intimidating. These all go well with his 6 foot long 400 pound black great sword which is almost a representation of himself (i.e. big, strong, powerful and deadly), hence he is called the Black Swordsman.







However his most insane looking armour is the Berserker Armour which can actually consume him with darkness if it takes control of him. The design is amazing and once he is under control he really looks like a demon himself. It's very detailed with several layers of metal on every inch of his body. The helmet and neck guard are what create his demonic look. The helmet has sharp teeth like spikes pointed down and the neck guard which also has sharp teeth like spikes pointed up towards the helmet making the gap between them look like a mouth full of sharp teeth. So when he lifts his head up and roars the gap between the helmet and neck guard widens and looks like a monster opening his mouth and roaring. This is a very clever design to me.

Dragon Ball Z, Majin Buu

I don't really enjoy the Dragon Ball series much but this character really caught my interest.

Like a man sized toddler with the power to destroy galaxies is how, fat version, Majin Buu is described. As you can tell from his appearance he is a very happy creature who likes to eat candy and is quite focused on his own self interests. These are characteristic almost similar to that of a child as he essentially is as we find out he is rather innocent and can be gentle. These go well with his very non-serious appearance, he is rather simplistic with an odd fashion sense and his pink skin is colourful so doesn't look very intimidating. He has little understanding of how to be evil and ends up healing people who can't run in fear or see him to be scared.



However the fat childlike Majin Buu isn't his original and only form. He was pure evil before he absorbed people and changed his mind and appearance. As shown on the second picture, this is how he looks when his evil side takes over. It's a very dramatic transformation from the fat and happy creature to a slim, muscular and intimidating looking Buu (Super Buu). His eye sclera is black making them look demonic and empty and make his red iris more distinguished adding to the demonic look. His colourful pink skin doesn't make any difference to this demonic look. Since he has muscles he has more detail put into him as well as more wrinkles on the face when he frowns to make him look more mature from his previous childish appearance making him more complex then the simplistic fat version of Majin Buu.

His appearance changes even further as the pure evil version and original form of himself is actually, as shown on the third image, Kid Buu. In comparison to fat Majin Buu, Kid Buu looks like a troublesome and bad child unlike the innocent and happy childlike Buu. Almost like two polar opposite kids which is essentially the idea. Fat Buu turns into the good side of Majin Buu and Kid Buu is the evil side of Majin Buu using child like personalities and apperances to represent good and evil.




Out of all the forms I prefer the fat version of Majin Buu for the actions he does and the stuff he says with that appearance are pretty funny for me and is very interesting. You get the idea he is misguided and misunderstood because of his monster like appearance.



Following video shows how Buu approaches a blind kid to scare him with his appearance then kill him, but since the boy can't see Buu to be scared Buu ends up healing the boy who becomes so grateful afterwards he isn't afraid of how Buu looks which confuses Buu:

Apply

This was my first storyboard that I made for my Apply brief that had to be 5-10 second long and I chose the option of love to depict. However I realized how long this storyboard was going to know I'm not going to fit this into 10 seconds.













These are the main two characters I designed which appear in my Apply animation, Kaemon and Neon. These will be the two love interests.















After careful consideration I finally created a shorter version of my storyboard which will hopefully bring across the message I want to depict. It will show the main boy character, Kaemon, through his eyes analysing and judging girls looks by what he processes as attractive in his eyes. However he will find out one girl has an item which suggests they have similar interests making him attracted to her for reasons other then the way she looks.

Explore

Depressed Ball:

This is my first attempt at making a flip book using the animation technique of squash and stretch to create a bouncing ball. I even gave the ball a face which shows his reaction to being bounced on the ground (unhappy).

 

Droplet Explosion:

I decided to go a step further and do a flip book animation of a droplet which explodes once falling on the ground.

 

Predator-Prey:

This is my first attempt at making a Pixillation animation. Using the stop motion technique I admit the method I used to animate the Deer and Lioness was tedious having to move each paper part which made up each animal. However, it was enjoyable and definitely seeing how it turned out. It could have been better, such as the animals' movements.

 



Telling Stories

To start I created some draft sketches of my storyboard for the nursery rhyme "Mary Mary Quite Contrary". I researched into how dark this nursery rhyme actually is and found out that the Mary told in this story is Mary Tutor whom is also related to the folklore "Bloody Mary". Also the items that appear in the nursery rhyme, "Silver Bells and Cockleshells", are names of torture devices related to the torture of heretics during Tudor times. This is why I decided to display a mirror in relation to the Bloody Mary folklore said that she is summoned through a mirror, torture devices (Silver Bells and Cockleshells) and represent "pretty maids all in a row" with tied up prisoners (i.e. heretics) being tortured.

Here is my final refined version of my storyboard for Mary Mary Quite Contrary with more information on what happens each stage and how the camera will move around as well as the character Mary.