Scene 4

Despite seeming like a relatively simple scene, this shot proved to be a complete and utter pain in the backside, mostly due to the issues of timing and camera movement. I had to listen to Stefan's score constantly while animating to ensure that I timed the sudden camera movement up to her eyes perfectly with the dramatic change in music. This proved to be a challenge but also a great learning experience for syncing and working with sound in general.



For the counting lip movements I imported the video reference of me counting and rotoscoped the lips, then went back and made adjustments to the shapes, exaggerating the moth in order to fit with my far more cartoony character.



I then adjusted the positions of the lips for each frame to match up with the bobbing up and down of the head.



Added hair and eye movement to show the change in the tilt of the head as it moves up and down.



Scales everything up to the correct zoomed in position on screen to match the storyboard.



Animated the surprised blink of the eyes and the camera shoots up to focus on them.





Animated the smiling change of expression as a symbol, allowing me to easily tween the camera pulling out at the same time.



Finally added the arms, string, and key, making sure to animate the key slightly as she tightens the string around it.

Scene 2

This short scene wasn't too difficult to do, though a little more time consuming than I initially though due to the extra care and attention I gave to her facial expressions due to this being a very close up shot. I also did't want the hair to seems stiff and lifeless, so I made it bounce as she looks back to exaggerate the sharpness of the movement. Personally I'm pleased wit the outcome, I love how something as simple as a little secondary animation to the hair can bring a whole new depth to a shot. It really shows that a little extra effort can go a long way.



The scene fully coloured.



Fully coloured with background. All the backgrounds for my animation are courtesy of my awesome background artist Roshni Kakad, a second year from my course who is helping me as part of her Professional Practice module. I sent her all of my research concerning environmental concept and we had a lengthy discussion about my ideas and exactly what I wanted to achieve with the visual style, and I'm pleased to say she's responded exceptionally well. Her lovely painterly style is exactly what I wanted to take the edge of the hard colours and outlines of Flash, making the entire animation look a lot more aesthetically pleasing I think. Having her work on the background will save me a lot of time I can use for animating, which is naturally the area I most want to focus on, and I also really love her use of colour.

Scene 1

Easily the longest and most painful scene in the entire film, this opening shot took me about a month to animate fully. Ridiculous, I know, but the amount of time and effort I spend on all te little details in this shot will hopefully make it all worthwhile. I really wanted to give it my all as this is the opening sequence; so it not only serves as an introduction to the plot but also to Tizz as a character as well. I want her to capture the hearts of the audience from the moment her face appears on screen, so I spend days working on her facial expressions alone. Looking back there were plenty of opportunities where I could have gotten away with just holding one facial expresion for a few seconds (she's only staring at a bottle, after all) to save myself time, but I wanted to breath as much heart and soul into her as physically possible. Such a close up shot demands attention to detail, I has to ensure her face never distorts, that her eyes track the bottle as she moves around it, that her hair always falls and curls correctly around her face and on the ground, that her body movements are convincingly realistic despite being confined to such a small screen... These are all things I thought about constantly.

One of the main challenges I face was when she moves around to the opposite side of the bottle. This seems simple in theory, but in practice it was actually quite difficult to pull off due to the proportions of my character. While it's perfectly plausible for her to be able to do what I envisioned with her design, it isn't possible for a normal human (at least not an inflexible one such as myself) to physically crouch and move in such manner. And since I can only understand such movements well enough to animate them convincingly by acting them out myself... you can see my problem. Thank full I managed to get through it thanks to a mixture of trail and error and sheer perseverance on the acting front, and I'm pleased with the result. I wanted her to seem curious and cat-like as she moved around the bottle, which I think she pulls off quite well. This scene really showcases her quirky and inquisitive nature.



Started by tweening the bottle into the shot to get the timing of the 'camera' pulling out.



I used the frames from my run cycle for the feet running in the background to save a bit of time. I then started animating the body and face first without any clothes or hair to ensure I got the actions and expressions perfect. I believe facial expressions and body language are the two most important aspects of character acting, hair and clothes are nice but secondary in comparison.













I think animating the body first was extremely beneficial when it came to animating the clothes, as I could easily see were the coat sleeves should fall without having the guess where the arms were inside and such. This made drawing realistic clothing folds much similar and in turn helps my my animation that bit more believable.



Here I decided to try giving her a cheekily determined expression wit her eyebrows furrowed as she pushes herself up, but I soon decided I didn't like this idea... At this stage she hasn't fully formulated the capturing lightning plan, she's still very much in the moment of discovery and I don't want her to lose the look of sweet awe and innocence just yet. I think if I did it would detract from scene 4 when we see her smile deviously after the lightning first strikes, that should be the moment the audience first realises she has something big in mind and is not just your ordinary everyday little girl.



The hair was especially tricky for two reasons. One, curly hair is hard. I thought my character's long straight hair from SS1 was difficult to animate, but it was nothing in comparison even though Tizz's hair is much shorter. The curls make everything complicated, especially in terms of weight, thickness, and how the curls should rub along side each other. I want her hair to seem like is has a good body to it, it needs to appear thick and fluffy with decent weight. I tried to present this by always drawing the locks full and round rather than having lots of thin little strands flying away on their own.



Here's the final scene in colour.

Run Cycle

Since she'll be running downhill I didn't want this to be be an ordinary upright run cycle, she needs to look panicked and desperate and like she running all out, perhaps even struggling to keep her balance a little from the speed of running downhill. With that in mind I adapted a basic run example from the Animators Survival Kit to fit Tizz's needs, only making her center of gravity a little lower than usual so she looks like she's running closer to the ground. This will also compensate for the lack of arms to balance her, as she'll be clutching the bottle in both hands. I tried to make it look as though her head and shoulders/upper body are swinging left and right as she runs to supplement this as well.









I also took the time the make her mouth open and close a little so it appears she's gasping for breath as the cycle loops.

Character Colours

Here are a few colour tests for Tizz. Rather than give her an ugly, harsh black outline that looks typically 'Flash', I decided to try outlining each component of her designs with a darker colour of what it's filled with, hopefully giving her a much softer edge as a result. Personally I really like the effect and I think it's worth the extra effort to make her look more traditional, plus this way she won't clash with the backgrounds.



-Auburn hair is just the might mix of red and brown to look interesting, compliments the bright yellow coat.
- Yellow coat/hat is the right shade of warm, golden yellow to contrast and compliment the blue and purples of the sky without looking garish.
- Blue tights and purple boots work well with the yellow coat/hat, and since they'll only every be seen against the green on the grass there's no fear of them blending in with the sky.

I'm pretty much set on this as my final colour palette, but here are a few of the other options I tried before making my decision.



-I like the idea of red hair, but this is too orangey-red for my liking.
-Green compliments the red well, but again is too similar to the grass.



-Blue coat/hat contrasts well with the blode hair, but will blend in too much with the sky/backgrounds.
-Grey boots look too dull and boring. Kids should have brightly coloured wellies!



-Pink strikes me as too girly a colour for Tizz, also a little to close to red. I don't want people to think she a variation on Red Riding Hood.
-Not sure I'm keen on her being blonde either... Something about it just doesn't suit her.



-Colours look off, not keen on the shades
-Green boots will belend in with the grass

Final Animatic

The final version of my animatic, now complete with sound! I had to tweak the timing of my original a little to fit the music perfectly, but other than that it's essentially the same. Personally I think the music works beautifully with my story and really helps deliver the sense of joy, adventure, and (at the climax) epic drama I'm trying to convey. Credit for the score again goes to the awesome Stefan Rutherford, who you can also find here. If you're reading this, thank you very much!

Working With An Audio Designer

I would like to introduce the wonderful audio designer who will be working with me on my project, Stefan Rutherford! I can't even begin to express how eternally grateful I am that he's agreed to help me out with the sound, as I've never attempted to compose my own music before and fear that my first attempt wouldn't be anywhere near good enough to use in a film I hope to sell myself to industry. Thankfully this arrangement will be beneficial to both our courses, so I'm really looking forward to hearing what he comes up with!

In order to give him a proper idea of exactly what I had in mind musically I sent Stefan both my animatic and storyboards, as well as a very long email detailing the exact feel and atmosphere I wanted to achieve. I also included two examples of music/sounds that had inspired and influenced my creative process up to this point. Below I've pasted a section from the email:

"I don't know if this is necessary, but I feel I should probably tell you a bit about the story of my film and the feel I'm going for, as simple as it is. It's basically about a young girl trying to catch lightning in a bottle. She's very curious (I tried to make her design and certain actions somewhat cat-like), adventurous and naive (not really considering the dangers of trying to achieve this feat, or the fact that it should technically be impossible). She gets the idea after finding an empty bottle labelled 'Lightning in a Bottle' on the ground, and upon seeing a thunderstorm approaching above decides to try catching some lightning herself. If some other kid can do it, why can't she? Maybe she wants to experiment with it, or maybe she hopes that the lightning will give her superpowers. Maybe it's just the excitement of trying to catch something so wild and dangerous and supposedly unobtainable and she thrives off the challenge. Whatever her exact reason, I really want the story to feel like it's being driven by her child-like sense of wonder and sheer determination, like nothing can stand in her way as long as she believes she can win. I'd like the music at the start to be quieter and reflect her innocent childishness as she discovers the bottle and makes her preparations to trap the lightning, then build in suspense and drama as the kite gets snatched away by the wind and the lightning gets closer and closer. She needs to retrieve the kite before the storm passes overhead and she misses her chance. There's also the danger of the lightning striking her or the pylon as she climbs it. Once all the drama is over and she's been flung to safety behind the rock, I'd like the music to quieten down again as she peeks over tentatively to see if she's succeeded.

The best example I can give is a piece of music called Enigma by Veigar Margeirsson. It's the music I listened to on repeat all the time I was concepting the idea and drawing up the storyboards, so I admit it's influenced me a lot... I was originally considering using it as the music for my film, but naturally I can't due to copyright. Plus it's a little too fast in places, I don't want my story to feel rushed... But hopefully it'll be a good source of inspiration. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA2veWBXgAQ

If possible I'd also like to have some sound effects in there as well (such as thunder, lightning, and possibly wind) to emphasise the weather, especially in scenes where the shot isn't actually of the sky but just of the character's face. A good example I've found is this student animation called Clouds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiyKoYaMVL0 I'd really like the sound effects to work with the timing of the music to give dramatic impact... But if things like strong wind can be effectively conveyed just using music, then I'm fine without there being an actual wind sound effect. Sorry, I don't really know much about these things so I'm mostly guessing... I'll leave it up to what you think works best."

As you can see it mostly reiterates what I've already repeated numerous times throughout the course of this blog, but I thought it would be useful to demonstrate my process of working with others in the industry on collaborative projects. Below you can find embedded videos of the two link given in the email.