Final Major Project.
"PHOBIA."
Section 1: Review (Approx 150 words)
Explain the journey you have gone through in this past academic year. What were the greatest milestones of your learning? How do you feel you have developed as an artist Explain how you have decided on your specialism – was it a turning point in a specific project? Have you always identified as a specific type of artist? If so, how have you developed and furthered your skills to get to this point? Explain how your journey has ended up here, with this idea, for this final major project.
During this year at college I’ve been studying Animation and Game design, I have learned how to use softwares such as Photoshop, Maya, Mudbox , Unity and Flash. I like how we got to do different things in each unit and by learning bit by bit we ended up being able to create our own video games and animations. What I enjoyed the most was the 3D sculpture modelling because as a artist who draws mostly in 2D it helped me to look at things such as small facial details, lightings and shadows differently .
I always enjoyed drawing little illustrations and comics until last year when I started playing around with flip books that I have created myself and realised that although animation is a time consuming thing i quite liked it that is why I applied for this course so I could learn more about Animation and develop my skills as an artist. My idea for this project is to connect stop motion and 2D animation and make the character go from real to fictional world.
Section 2: Project Concept & Proposed Artist Statement (Approx 300 words)
This is where you explain your FMP project idea and concept. Be specific about what you intend to communicate and what you hope to achieve by producing this work. How will your work engage or affect your audience and what will they discover by interacting with or viewing your work? Describe the theme/concept of your work – is it based on fact or fiction? Are you creating or reacting to a mood, an emotion, a sense of atmosphere or sensation? What is the title of your Project? What will you work towards producing? What will be your final outcome?
For my Final Major Project I will connect stop motion photography with 2D animation by using Flash.
In this project I want to create a world of fantasy and strange events, It will start off by this character who will be played by one of my friends walking through an old house and the person would find an old mirror which by touching it, it will get them to travel into a different dimension.
This whole scene would be done in stop motion which will also require me to do some editing on Photoshop.
The character would fall through a tunnel pretty much like in the scene of Alice in the Wonderland when she falls through the rabbits hole, it would lead the person to this scary and odd world created by peoples biggest fears such as big spiders, clowns, darkness and so on. When the character will try to escape it and find their way back they will realise that its impossible to leave, not wanting to be in such a place the person’s desperation leads to an act of suicide by falling off a cliff, but the story will repeat and the character will be trapped in there forever, it’s a paradox.
I will also be using sound effects like the ones in old black and white Mickey Mouse movies, where you are able to understand the concept of the story without any words.
I want to make the audience question my work, make them think about the side characters and how they got there, maybe they were normal people that just like our main character fell through the mirror and after some time it changed their appearance into what they fear, or if the person will ever escape such place. I want people to look at my work and think deeply about the concept of it rather than just watching it and getting nothing out of it.
Section 3: Methods (Approx 150 words)
Refer to any techniques and processes you intend to use. Describe the range of media and materials relevant to your project and how you may use them to explore and develop your ideas. Include aspects of studio practice, workshop procedures or the use of particular equipment and software etc. In the timetable, provide an indicative timescale for your project and indicate the manner in which you intend to divide your time in order to investigate, develop, produce and evaluate your project appropriately. This should be a meaningful plan to you and should be personalised to your project.
I will be using a normal camera from my smart phone to take the pictures for the first part of my work, I will then upload the pictures to the computer and edit some of them on Photoshop to make it look like the character is falling through the mirror. I will then move on to Flash and upload the pictures in a sequence which will create a stop motion animation. My next step would include me using my digital Wacom tablet which i can connect to the computer and draw the animation by hand on Flash. All i would have to do left is colour it and add the sound effects and music. So in conclusion i will only be using 3 softwares, Flash, Photoshop and Imovie towards the end of the project to edit my work and add sound effects to it.
Section 4: Evaluation (Approx 150 words)
How will you critically review and analyse your work and determine if it is successful? How will you identify directions for ongoing development? Do you have a method to record the critical response to your ideas? How do you propose to assess the success of your Final Major Project and what will be your methods of evaluation?
To check if my work is developed enough and is easy to understand I will ask a few of my classmates who haven't seen or heard of my idea to watch the video and give me feed back on it.
I will ask them if they understand what the whole story is about and how I could possibly improve to make it better. I will ask them to write a small note on what they thing about my work and then I will upload it to my website, If they say that something isn’t clear and they don’t understand scene 1 for example I will try to fix it by either adding text or re-doing the scene if I get some time.
Proposed Research Sources and Bibliography (Harvard Format)
What are the influences, starting points and contextual references and why are they relevant to your ideas? Indicate the subject areas you intend to research and the likely sources of information including any museums, specific locations, performances, etc you plan to visit. You should explain the value of this research and then compile an accurate bibliography correctly acknowledging all references including texts, periodicals, websites and video/DVD’s etc
Since my project will have both stop motion and hand drawn animation that is what I will be using for my reference, I have found a verity of different movies and animated films that I will be taking some inspiration from.
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Alice in Wonderland (1951 ) : I'm Late & Down the Rabbit Hole - YouTube. 2016. Alice in Wonderland: I'm Late & Down the Rabbit Hole - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q93VrYOXSe8. [Accessed 11 March 2016].
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a-ha - Take On Me (Official Video) - YouTube. 2016. a-ha - Take On Me (Official Video) - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914. [Accessed 11 March 2016].
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Alice 1988 (Clip) Stop Motion Jan Svankmajer - YouTube. 2016. Alice 1988 (Clip) Stop Motion Jan Svankmajer - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2y0Vu-Yq1U. [Accessed 11 March 2016].
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Nightmare Before Christmas. (1993). [film] Henry Selick.
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Caroline. (2009). [film] United Kingdom: Henry Selick.
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Mickey Mouse- Haunted House. (1929). [video] Hollywood: Walt Disney.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNuq5v7INeo
7. Koko the Clown sings "St. James Infirmary Blues" in Betty Boop's Snow White (1933) USA - YouTube. 2016. Koko the Clown sings "St. James Infirmary Blues" in Betty Boop's Snow White - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDATXtewPrg. [Accessed 11 March 2016].
Research
While looking for some inspiration for this project I came across this
music video which includes animation, pretty much like my idea they
have combined real world with fantasy. The directors of the video used a technique called rotoscoping in which the live action footage is traced
over frame by frame to make the character have realistic movements, I will be using rotoscoping at some point during my project because it
allows you to focus on the details and makes the work look more
profession.The song “Take on me” by a Norwegian band called Aha was a massive hit in the late 80’s, It took the band 2 versions and 3 releases
to finally get on top of charts in the United Kingdom, Thanks to Steve
Barron who directed and the Warner Bros. Records their pencil sketchedanimated music video it became their only single which reached the top position of the Billboard Hot 100.
Story board.
Editing pictures
Take on me (A-ha)
Alice in Wonderland (1951) has a big impact on this project, I actually got the whole concept of my story from this animated film especially the scene in which our main character falls down the rabbit hole and enters a strange world called “Wonderland” that is a place of endless possibilities and friendly characters, in the short animated cartoon
that I’m making the character just like Alice falls through a tunnel
which leads her to a different world , however I decided to create the complete opposite of what happens in the story of Alice in
wonderland, my character will enter a scary and dark land with a no way of escaping filled with creepy and unpleasant characters.
I really liked the idea of my character falling between different
dimensions that is when that specific scene of Alice falling down the
rabbit hole came into my mind, I’m going to draw my scene very
similar but with different colours and creepy eyes peeking through
the holes.
Koko the Clown (1933)
Alice in Wonderland (1951)
This is a scene from an old cartoon “ Betty Boop’s snow white (1933)” which shows a side character Koko the Clown (voiced by Cab Calloway) singing “ St. James Infirmary Blues” when he believes that Betty
Boop is dead. This whole scene where Koko’s dancing during the song has been rotoscoped from a
footage of Calloway.
The creator of Koko the Clown and also the inventor of the animation technique called rotoscoping was
Max Fleischer, when Max created his first cartoon star Koko the Clown the character was meant to take aback seat but he has been used as a Guinea pig who introduced and demonstrate the invention called
Rotoscope, which allowed the artist to trace over video movements of a person frame by frame and the
result was incredibly fascinating and made he character seem more realistic and human like. Max
Fleischer was also the first person to use sound and lip movement in his cartoons even before Walt
Disney with his debut cartoon “ Steam boat”.
I quite like that short scene of Koko the Clown singing about Betty Boop, In my opinion the rotoscope
technique in that scene has been really well developed and you can see that the animator has put a lot of time and effort into creating that short clip, and if you are wondering how that is going to have an impact of my work I want to also use rotoscope of something similar but instead of my character dancing like
Koko the person will be running. I also really liked how the background was made to move and it showed drawings that worked well with the song lyrics that the character was singing, I will try to create the
same effect with moving background.
surrealism
Surrealism movement began in the mid 1920’s in France and at that time it was believed that surrealism was a philosophical movement that was
supposed to help find out the truth in the world through the subconscious
mind and dreams rather than through logical thoughts. It included many
artists poets and even writers to express their theories and ideas through
out their work, many surrealists searched for inspiration in “Sigmund
Freud” who wrote about the memories and human instincts. Surrealism
paintings showed the subconsciousness of the artists mind, the artwork
would often include random objects put into one and somehow it always
made a little sense as it was usually trying to depict a dream.
I am going to include surrealism in my animation, it will happen in the part
where the character ends up in a different world and the whole place is filled with strange looking creatures.
For editing the pictures I used a software called Clip studio Paint that I have at home, it is pretty much like Photoshop except it is mostly used for doing digital art but it still allows you to do basic photo editing like you would on Photoshop.
I started off by uploading the first picture and changing the opacity to 50% and then I added a new layer on top of it, changing the opacity strength made it easier for me to see the outline of the reflection in the mirror.
My next step was to add another layer underneath the layer where the outline has been drawn and
apply colours that match the person in the picture. Since I am taking inspiration from a cartoon
called Adventure time I only used two tools to
colour in the picture, oil and blending brush
because the characters in the show dont have
many details.
After I edited and drew over all of the pictures It was
time to bring them into Flash and see how it turned
out, To be honest I quite like how it turned out althoughI could’ve taken more pictures and add them into the
next scene where the character falls through the
mirror, instead of drawing the character i could’ve
upload the pictures on Flash and draw on them like I
did in this gif but focus more on making it look like a
cartoon connecting of both fictional and real world.
Adventure time (2010 created by Pendleton Ward) is one of my favourite cartoons, It
tells a story about a 12 year old boy (Finn) battling evil with his best friend Jake who. happens to be a dog blessed with magic powers which allows him to stretch. The landof OOOoo where our characters live is all a result of a Nuclear War, the creatures that. inhabited are also creations of the nuclear radiation which made all of the them
mutate except our main character Finn who is believed to be the last human on earth.
The idea of this cartoon came into my mind when I was considering what kind of art
style I should use for my final piece I wanted to do something simple which would not have much detail but would still look appealing. The characters in the show usually
have small black dots for eyes and simple lines for the mouth, their arms and legs are usually long and thin also they don’t require much detail when it comes to their
colours.
In the beginning of April my friend and I took a trip to a Comic and Cartoon Museum in Russell Street. Although the Museum seems very small at first you soon realise that there are actually a lot of things to see, the museum is filled with famous cartoon characters such as Simon Cat, Looney Tunes characters and even Marvel.
The museum has a small room mainly for animation, they show how a simple animation such as Pepa Pig is made and how the voice actors prepare for their lines, they also played a short film which showed how to animate body movement.
My favourite part of the museum was a little creative room where the visitors could go in and learn how to make flip books, draw their own characters or simply read some comics. I found this trip very useful because it gave me tips on how to make my animation faster by not drawing much detail and not including a lot of frames, it also made me realise just how long it takes to create a perfect piece of an animation.
Character design.
This is a design that I did for my main character, just like I explained earlier in my research about Adventure time I used the reference from that cartoon. I made my character have a round head with little details, black dots for eyes and simple body shape, the legs and arms are thing and long. I coloured the drawings in both black and white and normal colours to show experimentation and at this point I’m not sure yet whenever I would prefer to draw this character in colours or leave it in black and white. I like this art style that I drew the character in, although it looks very simple I believe it still looks nice and professional, also it is easier to animate a character which doesn’t have much detail.
My next task was to design side
characters and make sure that they look as disturbing as possible, I
came to a conclusion that nothing
is better than turning childhood
memories into horror, One of the
most famous and well known
Disney Characters aside from Mikey Mouse is Winnie the Pooh. I drew Pooh the way I would draw a
human, with normal human body,
face features and height, expect he’s yellow and wears nothing but a red crop top like in the original
series. Now ,this character will
ppear between scene 4 and 6 and make a come back in the last scene, I came up with a cool idea to
rotoscope KoKo the clown ( 1933)
and turn him into Winnie the Pooh
singing the famous song “ St.
James Infirmary Blues” My target isto make my short animation even more disturbing and interesting.
Winnie The Pooh
My next character isn’t exactly my
own design but a character from a movie and also a Japanese mythical creature called Tenome which
translates to “eyes on hands” its
diet includes fresh human bones.
Tenomes are the lonely hunters that wonder through fields at night
hunting for tasty humans, but wait
until their prey is very close before attacking, those creatures are able
to run very fast however their
vision is not particularly strong, they have powerful sense of smell which helps them follow their victims in
the dark. Now the main character
will be running from one moster to
the other while trying to escape
them all, Tenome will be the last
creature that she bumps into beforeshe decides to take her own life.
Tenome
Im still not so sure whenever I’m
going to use this character or not but either way I done a quick sketch of
how I imagine him to look like, what
is more creepy than the classical
Disneys star Mickey Mouses head
attached to a human body, with
sharp teeth and blood shot eyes. This character has no intentions of
hurting Betty ( the main character)
however If i decide to include him in my work he will be following Betty
through the rest of the video.
Mickey.
Theres nothing worse than a
giant spider. I wanted to include my own fear in this work so I
drew this character and decided
to make him appear first, he
doesn’t do much harm beside
looking scary and disgusting.
The spider appears in the scene where Betty first enters their
world, the spider will slowly
make his appearance by
hanging off a tree, when Betty
finally sees him she will start
running and she will ran into
Pooh.
Spidy
Progress:
Betty
In the 3rd scene the character is falling through a magic hole which
leads her into another world, I wanted to make it look more interesting by adding all sorts of patters and scary faces on the walls of that hole
but I didn’t quite knew how to do without having to draw it every time
whenever I added a new key blank key frame. I played a little with
Flash and realised that I can draw outside of the frame and simply add Key frames which will allow me to just simply drag the picture across
the canvas without having to draw it all over every time. I then started
to add different layers for each individual thing, like the background,
the walls and the character it self, the layers make it easier to
separate or erase things without messing up the whole picture.
For the 4th scene I needed to find a panoramic picture of a forest so while animating the walking
sequence i can simply just move the background and make the character stay in one spot. I founda perfect picture that just needed to be edited to make it look dark, I dragged the picture into
Photoshop and put a Black & White filter over it, then I changed the brightness and the contras of
the picture, next I added another layer on top of that and drew some things in the back, like people hanging on a rope from a tree, a dark shed and eyes peeking through the grass.
The walking sequence
In my next scene the character will show a lot more movement, she will be walking through the forest until she notices a bit spider hanging from above, she will then start running until she meets another
creature. Last year I bought a book called “ Animators Survival Kit” which includes everything that a
beginner in the animation industry must know, the book teaches you about creating story boards,
animating the movement, weight of a character and even has a page about life drawing, it also
teaches you how to edit a completed piece of animation with voice overs and audio s.
I picked up the book again searching for a page which would show me how to animate a walking
sequence which i found on pages 164 - 181, it explains step by step how the legs should be drawn in
every scene and it also mentions that its important to not forget about animating the arms swinging. A helpful tip that I remembered from the book is that when a person is walking always only one foot
leaves the ground at a time however in a run both feet are off the at some point for about 1 or 3
positions.
In order for me to rotoscopre a video I had to put it into a sequence of images first which I have done on photoshop. I rotoscoped 50 frames of Koko The Clown and turned him into Winnie the pooh, It was difficult to draw over every frame because the cartoon was made in black and white and the quality of it isn’t the
greatest.I’m not sanctified with how it turned out but I believe thats the best I coulddo. In this scene you see
winniethe pooh wondering trough the forest as he meets the main character Betty who was running away
from the spider she saw in the previous scene. She will stop in front of the yellow bear hoping that he’s
friendly and willing to help her escape, but the more she stared at him the scarier he got.
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This is my story board with all the scenes that I am planning to do, although I have already decided to animate my character in a style of Adventure Time I wanted to draw the story board in my own style because to show more details. I mainly focused on drawing the characters and didn’t pay much attention to the background but I still managed to show how I expect my scenes too look like through out the colours. The first 3 scenes are simply just pictures that I took of my friend and then I will edit them on Photoshop to give it the cartoon-ish feel, before I take these 3 scenes into Flash I will draw over them in Photoshop, or example I will draw over the reflection in the mirror to make my friend look like a adventure time character and then draw the light coming out from the mirror as she falls through it. I will draw the rest of these scenes in Flash, for the rest of the story we see our ain character meet scary creatures that make her feel uncomfortable and afraid, as she tries to escape one of them she keeps running into another one until in scene 13 she realises that there’s no way out and decides to take her own life by falling off the cliff, but there’s a plot twist. As she falls from the top of the cliff she will end going back to the real world and falling out from the mirror.
I have used this picture for my story boarding but I liked it a lot and decided to actually include it in my final outcome so I went back and took screenshots of how I made the the background go darker with every frame.
I used a software called Clip Studio Paint and after I have coloured the drawing and went over it with a pen tool to make the outline stand out I added a new layer painted the area around Pooh black and blended it together so It looks like its fading in. I then changed the opacity of the layer and saved the pictures as a first frame for that scene. I continued doing the same thing with changing the opacity for every frame making it go darker and darker, and at the end I ended up with 8 frames. My next step is to upload this into flash and then when I’m done with every other scene I will edit it in IMovie, I’m planning to zoom into Pooh’s Face as the picture gets darker.
Story board to final piece
When I started doing my work in Flash I realised that it’s really hard to draw on there and the software doesn’t have have many options in brushes such as oil paint brush and the most important blend brush. I had to work with all I had and I was also struggling because I had small problems because the software crushed a lot. I am quite satisfied with how this scene turned out I believe It really looks like one of the characters from Adventure time.
I have struggled a lot with this scene mainly because I realised all this time I’ve been drawing everything in one layer rather than 3 separate ones for every character so I had to start gain. Because I wasted a lot of time having to draw every frame again I ran out of time to animate Tenome (the character on the right), I was going to make him lift up his hand and show the girl the eyeball that is placed in his but because I didn’t have enough time I just made him stand there and moved on to the next scene.
Creating my own background
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For scene 12 and 13 I had to create my own background by combining different pictures on Photoshop, Its easier and more effective that way rather that drawing it. I found a picture of a cliff with a view that I believe is somewhere in Florida, then I decided to look at abounded theme parks and find a ride that looks like a devil which I did. My next step was to place a Disney Castle, I used Banksy’s Dismaland Castle which fits perfectly, the castle looks destroyed and abounded. My next step is to place Mickey Mouse on the rocks and animate him.
For this scene I wanted to make sure that the characters feelings are really obvious
and nothing is better than reactions from Anime. I wanted Mickey Mouse to make the main character feel as uncomfortable as possible by showing interest in her, the pink
lines on his face are supposed to represent blushing, and the rain cloud in the second picture is representing sadness and failure. As you can see the picture in bottom left
doesn't include a rain cloud but purple lines above his head I wanted to change it to
give it a better understanding of what is going on.
So far this is probably my favourite scene since I had a lot of fun producing it.
Top Picture (Highschool host Club)
Bottom Picture ( One Piece)
Anime References
Evaluation
My Final Major project was a combination of Stop Motion with Flash 2D Animation, it tells a story of a girl who touches a magic mirror and falls through it making it change her
appearance into looking like a Cartoon character in a black and whiter word full of scary
creatures. In my statement of intent i said that my plan was to take pictures of my friend
walking through and old house and finding a magic mirror, I didn’t consider that it would
be hard for me to find such a place so instead I used a big mirror in the art room next door. I also planned to make the character commit suicide towards the end of my story but
instead of dying the person would just start looking alike all those creatures that she met
on her way , however I decided to change my idea a little bit and make it a happy ending in which the girl still attempts suicide by jumping off a cliff but instead of dying she will end
up going back to her normal life.
At first I wanted to use my own style of drawing because that is something I feel confident with doing but when i tried to do a little test in Flash I realised that It’s really hard to draw
anything in my won style due to the lack of tools such as soft and blending brushes, I had
to find a style which would be simple to animate and nice looking at the same time, and
that is when I though of doing my work in a style of Adventure Time. When i was doing my
research about traditional animation I came across Betty Boop Cartoons and i especially
liked a moment when Koko The Clown was singing and dancing in “ Snow White” I wanted
to include this very dance in my own work so I decided on rotoscoping that scene, I didn’t
consider that rotoscoping something in black and white with low quality would be hard and I had to improvise since I couldn’t see every movement properly and ended up turning Kokointo Whinnie The Pooh.
When I finally had my story and decided on the type of art style and characters I will be
using, my next step was to produce a story board and start animating.
What I liked the most about this project was how much freedom we had on deciding what
we wanted to create, every single person from my class created something unique and
different than the rest of us, I believe it showed how creative young people can get while
showing off the skills that we learned during our academic year.
I think if I had a few more weeks to complete this project I would re draw some of the
scenes and make them look more professional and more detailed.
My teacher suggested that I should edit my video and make it easier for the audience to understand what is happening, In the video on the right I haven’t added any sound effect or text beside the music, which
makes the story a bit confusing for someone who haven’t read my statement of intent. So I decided to
edit the video again and just give the character voices and make them explain the story but while I was
looking through Mickey Mouse videos to see how he speaks I came across a video called “ Suicide Mouse Small World” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwmGeUZDSCo ) where someone who does a voice of Mickey talks about Disney from the point of view of a serial killer. The way he talks about Disney fits my animation really well so I decided to get rid of the music and replace it with the audio from that video I found.