Animated Documentary - credit draft

Bird audio

Sheep audio

For a start on some end credits, I tried to include the things I liked about the credits I had researched. I added main things like: who it's by, who voiced, logos and copyright. 

I then picked out some audio from the bird and the sheep we didn't use, I picked these because the newt had 3 parts where as these only had one or two, so thought we could include some extra audio from them. 

I went for a serious piece of audio and a humorous piece. At this point i think the bird audio sounds good, joking about been in bikini on the beach in winter (in the Caribbean) but not sure if it takes away from the interview topic of weather/climate change the UK? I'd have to discuss this with Ciara and we can make adjustments together, see what goes.  

Animated documentary - titles and credits research

I stumbled across this video when looking for good ways to add tiles and credits to our animation. 

What I like about this it that it has the interviewer speack, off camera while the name of the film is on the screen, it tells the audience before anything starts that this is an inverview, instead of diving straight into the animation, where people may not really understand what it is. I think a little something like this will help the audience establish what kind of video they are watching. 

I also like at the end where the character is laughing when the creators website come up, to me it's adding more humor off screen like a blooper of some kind, which could be a fun way of ending our animation. 




And with this video, they had an animated intro for the tile, we could experiments in creating something with plasticine or just have like here wobbly letters. for the end they added blooper audio also, and I like that they include a special thanks to the people they interviewed which I think would be nice to include in ours.

Or like with Shaun the Sheep simply have a still background which music to end the animation.




Also for titles, most of these films have a still images and text, or only slight animation as the title is on the screen, I could just put the same image as the end credit, or film a little bit so it's building up to the animation setting, I can try out a few things see what works.

Animated Documentary - Sheep Day 1 (set up)

When setting up, we added the third light to illuminate the green foliage,  because when doing background tests, this is what we thought needed lighting up  to made the two layers blend better together. 

We leveled the camera to the same height as the sheep so it looks like a realistic interview, looking head on to the character. 

We tend to listen to the audio and when we feel there need to be a blink, add one in, or when we get to certain words that sound exaggerated, talk to eachother and act out how a person would move when saying this bit.

A section today we added movement for was 'down the end of the road' when going through the lip sync we noticed we would gester to one side as if tilting our head to ' down the road' so we worked out how we would move the character. I did struggle a tiny bit moving the head, as the character had no neck, as i didn't want to squash or damage the model, but i think one this plasticine warmed up from my warm hands, it was a slight bit easy to animate.   

Animated Documentary - Sheep mouths

Because we had some slight squash issues with the birds, and because it's easier to handle baked mouths, I went out and go some more fimo so me and Ciara could quickly create some mouths we could bake. We also created a small 'e' (top left) shape, because when listening to the audio of the sheep, we found that sometimes when pronouncing words the e/s sounds wasn't a big facial expression.    

Animated Documentary - Sheep set tests

Before we started animating with the sheep, we decided to first decide on how we wanted the background to look. We have some model foliage that I used on the newt set, which we thought we could use with this set also. We gradually built up the amount of foliage, taking photos of each stage, so that we can see what looks best with an photographed background. 

I put together the different amounts of foliage images along with different images I took. I think that the image with the foliage bushes works the best because with the others the floor and the grass in the image clash and it doesn't look nice. but with the bushes there it breaks that up so that it just looks like the field behind is a bit different from this with the sheep in.


I feathered round the edge of the bush so that there wasn't a harsh line between background and foliage, which made it slightly better.






I also blurred the background to continue that depth of field. And adjusted the colour balance so it matched the sheep layer more.

It looks okay, but I still don't think the colours match up properly or maybe it's the image. 
It might be a case of lighting the bushed to help it blend better or looking back at an image I took, it might be that the image needs bring down slightly so the horizon is lower down and behind the bushes. 















I went back to the images and tried to make it look as thought we had lit up the bushes, I upped the brightness, and already I think it's looking better and blends well with the background.


I also adjusted the levels of the background image so it was slightly darker, and brought the image down so the horizon is behind the bushes, it looks a lot more realistic now, and not as odd as it did before. So I think if we illuminate the bushes, this will help it look a lot better when adding the green screen.  

Animated Documentary - Bird Day 1-3

We had prepared our selves by going though the audio and noting down the mouth shapes, so that we could just com into uni and get on animating.

We watched some videos of birds and some creature comforts to help us with adding some movement to the characters. we decided to have the bird ruffle it's wings a few times, especially at the bit where she says drizzle, as we thought it would look like she things it's not a nice thing, considering she's a more tropical styled bird.

I sketched out a rough animation of how we could create this, and applied it to the animation when we were happy. We adjusted this patter slightly depending on how fast/slow we wanted the wing movement to be. And we thought it worked really well, it looks like she's shivering at the thought of cold drizzly English rain.

Animated documentary - Bird set up (Day 1)

Before starting with the birds, we had a sort out with the set up, moved the extra tables out of our way, and now are in out own little booth, giving us more space to animate in a safer way and hopefully out the way of it being knocked.

We also made sure the set was secured down with tape so it would not wobble and we also put wire from the birds into the set so that they would stay upright, and so they would move out of place too much.  

When had had finished animating for thew day, we decided to quickly see how it would look with green screen background. if you look closely the green screen picks up some on the model, and isn't a smooth outline round. we may have to either use the pen tool around the model, so that nothing we've animated get effected. But this is something we can do in post.   

Animated Documentary - Newt Day 8 (animation done)

Today we finished filming all of the newt. We decided that we would go back to the angle cut towards the begining of newt scene 1, because we thought that because the animation is so short we don't really need any cuts as it would looks busy, but the only reason we did is because the tripod was knocked and thought the easiest thing to do would be to cut angle, but it didn't look good as it was only a small part before the next scene, we we went back and tried our best to get it to the angle and position is was in the section before. However, I'm still not sure it looks perfect, we talked about having a zoom cut, but still it's only fast until the next section where it goes back to the previous angle.

I think we'll work more on this in post, because we really need to continue animating the other character.

We also decided to cut out a bit of the last section of speech, this was because when we had finished for the day, we didn't think it needed that extra bit on the end. that it sounded fine to end there.

Here is where we are up to, I added the background to see how it would look, and it works. We'll need to stabilise the videos ad there is camera shake, but I'm sure we can fix that in post also.




We also had a sort out with the set up, moved the extra tables out of our way, and now are in out own little booth, giving us more space and hopefully out the way of it being knocked.

Animated documentary - Newt Day 6

Returning to college after Easter hols I was met by some problems. The background had falledn onto the model, causing his head to have been squished. The tripod had also been knocked, which cased camera ofset. 

I did my best with some help from tutor Annabeth to try and get it back to the right set up.

We discussed that if this failed to either redo that scene or change the angle at an appropriate cut.

We managed to get it pretty much in the same position and set the lighting and camera back correctly, and after re moulding the character, I was okay to start animating again. We'll probably need to adjust positioning and light a bit in post, but hopefully that should be a problem.

This issue really set me back, because that time setting everything back to how it was, could have been spend animating. So again we're behind in our schedule.  

Responsive - Project report

Animated documentary - Newt Day 5

I thought it would be really good to do a time lapse our the process we go through each day when animating.

We sit and discuss the mouth shapes and eye/body movement while listening to the audio to see what shapes we need and for how many frames.

we then take it in tuns to animate bits, while the other guides us in what looks good on the screen.

It's so much better working with Ciara, as we take on eachothers thoughts and have ideas bouncung around on how the character can move.