Author: Amy Thoetong

this activity where we cut out squares of different sections of images that caught our eye helped when thinking of possible ideas since I saw a pattern of things I was interested in like nature or the structures of buildings

from looking at the different images I collected I found that I was interested in different textures, buildings, people and scenery/nature. this helped when considering what I wanted to focus on when exploring the monochrome project and what I wanted to test and experiment on.

test 9 – adding ink to the previous test to add more texture, i liked how the ink turned out and want to incorporate it more later on in my other tests, i wanted to add the eye since I thought if I tied it to the subject blinking it would add an extra layer of meaning

test 10 – one of the objectives was to make something ugly/lazy and I made this fit within the lazy aspect as the crumpled-up paper was meant to show that this was made quickly and it was like a bunch of mistakes complied to make a test animation

test 11 – looking back at when I folded the paper to create ridges I wanted to adapt that since I wanted it to look smoother as the shadows aren’t as harsh to fit with what I had in mind for my film

test 12 – going back to test 11 and wanting the shadows to be smoother, I found that the previous test was a bit too rough and the moment was more bumpy than I anticipated. I went back and tried it again but this time took more frames to make the moment go smoother and I also fixed the timing to make it go a bit slower. this outcome resembled waves more which I was pleased about as that was what I was trying to achieve with my film and how I wanted to portray different moments of silence and what they look like to me.

test 13 – from the feedback received, I did get rid of the hair-flowing sequence and replaced it with more of these tests and i did another one to resemble water and the idea for this one was to go between the folded paper and the ink to relate the two sequences.

final before feedback.MOV

For my film, at first, when we started I didn’t really have any clear ideas on what I wanted but throughout the different workshops, I saw that I was drawn to a lot of imagery depicting everyday life. The more tests I did the more I had a better idea of the concept I wanted, which was every day, more specifically to me the different moments of silence. What came up a lot was working with the materiality of the paper and seeing what different textures could be achieved by filing or scrunching it and applying ink on top for the extra scrunch from the liquid being absorbed into the paper. looking back at the process of making this film, I saw that I took the workshops and didn’t fully try out each objective, for example when we had to create a limitation for ourselves I chose to focus on that and I didn’t fully look into the other ways I could’ve pushed the film. However, I mostly adapted from each test I made and kept going from there which in the end I’m still happy about. When working with the sound I was unsure of what to do but I wanted to initially have something that would resemble water in music form, I was unsure of how to make that so I used Ichiko Aoba’s song “Ohayashi” which had the sound I was looking for and then combined that with rain sounds that I collected myself. The feedback given was mostly to do with the sequence of the hair moving which was noted didn’t really fit in with the rest of the film as well as the sound which sounded too “nice” since the film is more gritty and could use sounds instead of music. when looking back i do agree with the hair sequence not match with the other parts of the film as well as maybe extending the other parts of the film that was already successful. Overall I enjoyed monochrome as it was definitely something new but similar to what I’ve done in the past, the hardest part was not focusing on the film being about a character even though there’s not a narrative behind it which was the end goal. I’m still happy with how this turned out, however, some tweaks needed to be revised after receiving the feedback. I really enjoyed the start with the paper wave as well as the eye, that was probably my favourite part of the film.

After choosing the audio, the exercise where we had to draw down what initially came to mind when listening to our audio helped me get all the ideas that I had and made it so I didn’t stick to one idea and also having the situations be more unexpected and not being an exact copy of what the audio was originally from. My ideas ranged from the most expected situation I could think of being two people talking, the most unexpected was to use the sound and put it in the context of animals talking about their “litter”. In the end, I wanted to go with the more unexpected situation as there was more I could do with the audio.

at this point, I was still figuring out the story or narrative I was trying to focus on and other details like how the characters might relate to each other. In the end, I went with the idea that it was two cats talking about their trash in the context of the owner having to take out their litter which plays on the word in the audio as they discuss not littering.

the feedback I got back from my classmates was that the storyboard needed to be made clearer on which cat was on the frame – at the time I had already made the character design sheets for this second draft but I needed to apply it to the storyboard, also they suggested making a character sheet for the owner too since his movement is still visible while the other two cats are talking.

when designing these I thought about how I could design them to fit the aesthetic style I had in mind for this project, I wanted flat colours and more outlines so it would look more on the illustrative side. I also changed around the initial colour palette I had in mind to a more muted softer earthy colour palette since its less bold and calmer, but also so for the end scene it would contrast more since it is brighter.

note – I decided that the outlines being black looked too harsh, so I changed it and I liked this outcome better since it was much softer and it would also allow the characters to stand out better as they would be outlined in black

-Transcript –

Tall cat – that guy’s got a ton of trash

Small cat – he’s being VERY VERY nice , he’s really helping the community, thumbs up to that guy!

Tall cat – thumbs up to that guy!

Small cat – all the litterers, i just have to say PLEASE STOP LITTERING, we’ll give you peace

lip sync key frames .mov

inbetweens.mov

final unsure .mp4

Choosing the audio was quite hard but I ended up using a short interview clip which could be interpreted in many ways, I tried to think of unexpected ways I could convey the conversation but also the most expected being an interaction between two characters with one being the interviewer. I got inspired by the animations of past students where their characters were animals having a conversation which I thought could translate well with my audio. While still thinking about the story I researched some art styles and colour palettes I thought would suit well with the vibe Initially I thought of it being cute and loose, similar to children’s book illustrations either with a bright or a more toned down colour palette. I went through many trials and errors thinking of what I wanted to animate and made a few storyboards and using the feedback from my peers (initially the storyboards were unclear and hard to differentiate the two cats from one another but at the time I was still making the character designs for the two cats so I was unsure what to put for the storyboard). with the character designs for the characters I initially did two but I got feedback to make a character design sheet for the owner since he would still be included, i went super simple with the designs since it would make it easier to animate and I could focus more on the animation then making sure the details stay consistent. an issue I did come across during this first elective was that when making my x sheet, it didn’t seem to link up to the audio when I was starting to animate on toon boom. Still, since it wasn’t fully off I used the x sheet as a guide and did most of the scrubbing of the audio again on toon boom. for my final outcome, I had some feedback from my peers suggesting that I needed a few more in-between in some sections, having close-ups of the cat that talking since it is confusing as there’s a lot of motion happening in the middle and also making a normal walk cycle for the owner as he walks off screen.

lipsync (feedback).mp4 – I applied all of the feedback I was given, however, I prefer it as a wide shot so you can see the owner walk out. the only downside is that it can get confusing on which character is talking

out of the word blank we chose these 6 words – decay, lies, greed, forget , hope, silence

At the start we discussed quite a lot of what ideas we had for this 20 sec story like what genre we wanted it to be and the visuals/techniques we were going to use to make the outcome. Initially our story was going to based on an overpopulated world, discussing topics like class division, pollution, etc and wanting to reference artists like Lotte Reinger and John Galliano. Our story that we did start to plan out was a lot more detailed and wouldn’t be able to fit in the 20 second time frame so we ended up boiling it down to what we liked about the story we had so far, that being a clear visual of the two different classes or contrast in two groups of people and having it be set in a dystopian apocalyptic world.

The issue we came across when coming up with the story was that what we had was too long and parts would be irrelevant to the story and would be taking up time we could show to other parts. For our first storyboard, the first few seconds of the story we wanted to do a sequence of a person underground going through photos and having different reactions to the photos being shown. However it was discussed between everyone that its adds more confusing to who the person flipping through the photos is and also if it was needed, it was advised that we started on the part where we see the two characters interacting as we intended to show their story.

At the same time we established that there was going to be a protagonist and an antagonist, exploring different character designs we took the ideas of how the protagonist was meant to be the example of hope so we chose to make the character a kid and to contrast the antagonist was sharper and the character design had to show there greed and unlike-ability.

From the feedback we got on our first storyboard we focused on the interaction between our two characters, during this we also established that there wasn’t actually a conflict to change the story from the start to the end, so we thought of changing the interaction section and making it clearer that the women is actually the antagonist. Changing it to before the boy and the women’s interaction it would be shown that the boy is planting and taking what he’s grown and as the woman goes on her stroll she encounters him and sees that he has something that’s she doesn’t already possess which is food, she tricks the kid into giving her some but realises that wasn’t enough and takes everything he has. But also because she takes his things there must be a consequence to her actions and to having that change in the story, we thought it would visually be interesting to explore the transformation of nature taking over her.

We ended up changing the way she was overtaken by nature since before it took over her house and the feedback we got was that it wasn’t a big enough change and that we needed something drastic to change the end from the middle or either a change to the beginning. Instead of the vines taking over her house it would also engulf her.

combining all the ideas from the final storyboard translated well into the animatic since what we had was around 20 seconds.

Since our storyboard was formed we worked on the visuals and aspects like the colour palette that we wanted. We were inspired by these images below, taking the apocalyptic idea into mind, bright colours came to mind to show the intensity of the damage that was caused to this world.

Initially we wanted to film it rotating however the set piece was too big so to overcome this we shot a single frame and animated it digitally. I think it works well still because it still has the textures of the cardboard and if we did film it, there would’ve been movement.

The ‘Out Of Your Head’ project was my experience making my first short film and it being a collaborative first project really helped me ease into the process, Also, having a group helped with time management and getting each of our parts done quicker. Our project was a joint effort meaning we didn’t separate the scenes to allocated group members but focused on allocating different roles like set design or character design to each other which helped make our film look consistent in style. In the beginning, it was quite tough to come up with a story that fit within the 20-second timeframe especially since it’s so short but when we did come up with the story there were other difficulties like planning how big our set pieces would be compared to the rostrum setup, however, we overcame this by filming what we can and then editing it later and using green screens. For this editing section, it was quite simple since we filmed it all with stop motion and didn’t use any other media, but the sections like the world spinning had to be done on After Effects as well as the green screens of our two characters running were also edited into the shout of the world spinning which was simple and quick to do. When filming the actual stop motion, it was less complicated than I originally thought and was done quite quickly but we did come across a problem as we chose to use paper dolls, they were very fragile and it was quite hard to move them without breaking there pose as well as the rostrum camera showing the bars holding up the set up so we ended up using cotton for the clouds to the set which in the end worked out and added more depth to the scenes. In the end, the final film was shot similarly to the animatic but was missing some shots since it would’ve been too long, but the final film in my opinion still makes sense without it. Our logline/concept was ‘following a devastating factory meltdown, a hope-driven young boy attempts to replant a barren earth, only to have a chance encounter with the only other person that hasn’t run underground – a cowardly woman who only cares for her worthless wealth’, our concept was inspired by the 6 words from the start of the project and the ideas branched out to make this film and main inspirations why we filmed this way were the films “The Little Prince”, “Au Revoir Balthazar” and the artist “Aoi Tokunaga”. Overall my experience with this project was very positive and it was a good first project, especially after the 6 weeks we had before this project, we ended up getting inspired by the stop-motion lectures and the different films and artists shown during those two weeks and incorporating that into our out of you head project. The hardest part for me was the start of the project when we had to boil down our ideas into a consistent story and try to fit that into the 20 seconds.

for our first task we were looking at transformation and the metamorphosis of shapes and what displacement and replacement animation. our first stop motion animation was looking how we could transform one shape into another using an interesting transformation transition. I thought I was a good way into warming up into the technique since we would need to visualise how our shapes would transform into the other in paper form.

we realised that if were to look at movement and transformation we wouldn’t really be able to focus on character or having a scene since we wanted to focus more on the shape which was why our outcome was really reduce to the essentials to also leave room for interpretation based on the sound as well.

Well during my two weeks I had on stop motion, I thought I was the most knowledgeable on this technique compared to the other two but since we looked at creating the stop motion made from paper I think it really stripped it down to what was really needed to be shown which made me get out of my comfort zone of how I would normally approach stop motion, which is hand drawn from a overhead angle. Since we were looking to explore movement and transformation it would mean that our work would look more abstract in turn to focus on the metamorphosis of the shapes. I felt that it was more spontaneous when working more abstract since there isn’t really a storyboard behind the work and we were basing our work on the sound we chose and how it would translate into movement. 

For my 5 seconds contribution to the animation sequence I had somewhat of a plan since as group we decided that because our sound was like water we would base it around like a park scene and for my section I tried to make shapes transform into another with interesting transformation and used quite a bit of both replacement and displacement animation. I was trying to replicate  a bench shape with the rectangles which then transformed into the tree which I thought turned out quite well with how the rectangle shape went from hard edges to a circle to then being a tree. But I do want to improve it by changing the way the tree moved out of the shot since our backdrop wasn’t completely black and if it were it would’ve looked like it floated out and worked with the theme of how the shapes were sort of floating in this space. Our feedback for our final 20sec animation were that it was reduce to the essentials which in our case I think worked well as we aren’t completely telling what is truly happening in the animation, and might try adding a mirror to the backdrop to see how that might affect our animation and the outcome it might have. Overall I learnt more than I expected for stop motion especially about how movement in stop motion but animation in general is essential and how sound would translate into those movements , in the future project I would like to carry forward that spontaneous movement created from the different ways to transform one shape into another. 

Abstract self portrait .mov – with sound

The two weeks I’ve experienced with 2D motion graphics was quite challenging, going into a new program and learning how after effects works. During the process of starting off with learning after effect with moving around shapes and getting an introduction with the basics for example the eases and key frames helped me get a grasp of the program and to making my abstract self portrait. The brief for these past 2 weeks was making a abstract self portrait with sounds and a viewing into what I’m thinking or feeling, my initial idea was a calm feeling complimented by the sound of wind or anything similar but when making it, the components of my “portrait” made the outcome look busy but I think they way they moved created this interesting contrast with the calmness of the movements but the way everything moved everywhere changed the experience while remaining to have this calming peaceful effect. 

My storyboard – brief – two people having a disagreement

First production principles was storyboarding —

first time storyboarding and learning about how it works and the basics to why we should do it and I learnt a lot from the 2 weeks , mostly for me I learnt that every part of the storyboard needs to has a purpose and there needs to be a change in the story.

observational drawings from Tate museum

Three part sequence

Three part sequence – thinking about the feedback given

In the two weeks we learnt about storyboarding, I’ve definitely have seen a progression in my skill for storyboarding as before this I’ve never explored creating narratives or has made a storyboard before. Finding out about how significant a storyboard is for animators and also how storyboarding is not just a collection of thumbnails but it also is a plan for the literacy involved and that every part of the storyboard needs to add to the story. Definitely something that this workshop improved was my knowledge on composition and the many different composition that adds interest to a scene.  During the observational drawing at Tate Modern I struggled a bit with getting down the shapes of form of the movement but not getting into detail. When creating my 3 panel narrative I found that because I used observational drawings it made it easier to get a narrative as they work as a base but for my original narrative I think it lacked a change in the story but when getting feedback having the girl be sad to excited gives the story an emotional journey that it lacked in the first. In conclusion, this storyboarding workshop definitely has taught me definitely the basics for storyboarding and creating narratives and meaning but most importantly having that change from the beginning to the end which engages with the viewer