Preparing for the Animation Project

As Unit 3 came to an end, I began to readjust my mindset to look out for useful learning resources relating to animation. This included: talks/woorkshops to attend, films to watch, books to read and articles to work through; all of which have been grouped together and recorded below.

Talks & Workshops

Andy Symanowski [from Aardman Studios]

On the 29th of Janurary, Andy came in to Wimbledon to give us a day-long talk on the work of Aardman studios and his role within that. Below you can see him working on a scene between Hobnob and a rabbit in their latest film 'Earlyman' [2018].

During this day, we picked up on multiple topics within animation and the key things to remember when creating your own. I've noted them as key bullet points below.

Writing & Storyboarding: Note the key points, actions and events. Pick a genre and style, stick to it! Is the story achievable within the limits? [e.g. budget, time limit of 10 weeks, team size]. Does the storyboarding make sense? Have external members look through it. Exercise a range of shots [WS-CU]
Creating and Animating a Puppet: Have a visual style for your character[s]. Keep your characters to scale with one another & consider the colour pallette of them all. The main reason for animating is to have texture! Consider this with both the characters and their costume designs. 80% of human emotion is seen in the eyes; make sure to put this into action when animating! Facial expression and eye movement will be the making or breaking of your characters. Research movements and act them out in a video recording as reference material. Fix characters to your set. Make sure the pacing of your character matches the audio/visuals/set/story.
Creating the Animation's Set: Just like the last project, the set should tell a story before any characters are placed within it. The set must be alive too! Consider moving elements. Only build what you will see in the film. Consider the space needed for the characters to move around in. Keep stylistic choices flowing between the characters and set; unify them as one. Create access points! Removable walls/spaces to reach the characters and animate them. Design for the camera. Fix your set to avoid unwanted frame changes. The background must have depth! Foreground, midground, background. [3D, 1/2 3D, 2D]
Filming the Animation: Create the atmosphere through lighting. Subjects must be lit well and consistently! Avoid camera movements [unless you have experience in this]. Establish the set [WS] 24 fps, translates as 12 pictures per movement. Clear focus and direction for what the audience must be looking at. Tell the story visually, it should make sense without dialogue. Narrator? Subtitles? Dialogue? TBD.

What makes a good animation?

In order to animate a story, there must be a reason you've chosen stop-frame over live action. The story must make sense, viewers should be guided through without any confusion. Clarity, consistensy, simplicity. The style and content should fuse together seemlessly. A successful animation is one that makes you forget that what you are seeing is animated.

Mikey Please [from Parabella Animation Studios]

A few months ago, my tutor [Kerry] suggested that I watch a short animation titled "The Eagleman Stag". I was instantly blown away by it, I had never seen an animation before made purely in black and white using paper/foam/styrene for every visual component. The story is beautifully told and the skill of animating is just immense. Anyway, a few months passed and on the 8th of Feburary I was notified that the animator of this short [Mikey Please] would be doing a talk at the Regent's street Apple store. I cancelled my plans and heading there on my own.

The first half hour consisted of Mikey showcasing his work with useful commentaries alongside the presentation. As noted before, he has a very particular style when it comes to material choice and this is something he brought up quite soon into the event. He told us how things were just so much simpler when you stripped away the "messy" qualities of animation [for example, plasticine] and just focused on the shape, form and depth. Later on, he went on to comment on the need for empathy for the characters. When creating "The Eagleman Stag" in his graduating year at university, his tutor told him that the main character's father was simply horrible and that you had to involve some kind of narration that made you see at least some kindness in a character. As much as Mikey didn't want to do this, he made a small decision in changing a scene from the father and son simply walking off together to the father placing the child on his shoulders beforehand. I think this is something important to note, empathy is a huge must when creating characters who aren't real. If you don't feel for the characters, you don't care for the story and its outcome.

The next hour of the event was a workshop! We were handed out iPads and Apple pencils and given a short introduction to Animatics.

Definition of Animatics: a preliminary version of a film, produced by shooting successive sections of a storyboard and adding a soundtrack.

This is a technique I'd seen many times while watching "making-of" footage for animations, but had never actually tried myself. I was already accustomed with the software involved [ProCreate and iMovie] so that sped up the process quite a bit. By creating a basic structure [e.g. the body and head shape], I could then add multiple layers traced over one another to animate the movements of the eyes, mouth and frown lines. Below you can see the 8 second clip I produced - the narrative was made up very quickly on the spot and it simply shows a younger male rolling his eyes and blurting out something that angers an older male. Their inverted colour schemes are then fused together and you see an unfortunate relationship between the two.

Above: Animatics test video that I made with ProCreate and iMovie.

The above clip was played on a huge screen in front of the whole Apple store and I was given some very positive feedback from Mikey Please! He seemed very impressed.

John Lee [independent prop and model maker]

[Involved in the making of: Aliens (1986), Alien vs Predator (2004), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) and many more].

Visiting industry proffesional, John Lee, came into Wimbledon today to run us through his own show reel with some useful pointers along the way, I've summarised them below.

Use the lightest materials possible! [e.g. foamex].
Drymounting is a good technique for the effect of an exploding set.
Focus on making sets modular and adaptable to script changes.
3D printing appropriate for prototyping, not for the final product [too brittle].
Choose materials that don't expand with room temperature changes.
Flowing river effect can be made using a sheet of perspex with gravel [etc] in a tray below and a sheet of acetate being rolled across the top of the perspex.

Films & Shorts

Like most people my age, I grew up in love with multiple stop-frame animations - all kept on VHS tapes and rewatched daily. It was basically a ritual. 'James and the Giant Peach' [1996] was definitely at the top of my list, but then of course there was the collection of Wallace and Grommit films, 'Chicken Run' [2000], the series 'Creature Comforts' [1989], the later found 'Coraline' [2009] and so many more. There was a huge period in my life where I was adamant about becoming an animator and that passion definitely grew from a childhood raised on stop-frame genius.

Over the past week, I've seen quite a few noteable films as seen below.

'Slow Derek' [2011] Directed by Dan Ojari After watching "The Eagleman Stag" I went on a bit of a Parabella spree watching everything they'd ever made. However, there was one clear winner for me: 'Slow Derek' [2011].

Sypnopsis: "The tale of Derek, an office worker, as he struggles with the true speed of planet Earth." It was about 1 minute into this film that I realised, had this been made as a live action film, I would be bored out of my mind by this point. The visual texture and quality of stop-frame animation is what makes even the most mundane of motions addictive to watch. As derek slowly wakes up and prepares himself for the day, your entire soul is sucked into every small movement. This particular short animation presents a beautiful combination between footage of the puppets and set in motion with visual documentations of light experiments; seen when Derek's inner feelings and frustrations with the world are illustrated with meteor-like eruptions and voyages through dark expanses wfilled with dust and light distortions. It's a brilliant short, absent of dialogue or narration, just a visual and audial journey left open to interpretation.

I'd really like to take forward the idea of creating more than just the animation of puppets, but to use light and other matter to communicate the story and atmosphere.

'Early Man' [2018] Directed by Nick Park

After [quite a firm] suggestion from Andy Symanowski to see Aardman Studios latest release 'Early Man', I decided to use up 2 of my free cinema vouchers. Conclusion: I'm glad I didn't pay to see this film ...and also slightly annoyed that I wasted my vouchers on it.

My verdict: they've tried too hard and gone too 'big'. Aardman's success came with a handful of characters, a handful of sets and a feeling of empathy for the characters and their simple relationships. They're accommodating too much for the modern idea of children's animation. The narrative was too expansive, there were too many characters that you felt nothing for and the involvement of football well... I just believe they could've done so much more with the idea of "Stone vs Bronze" without that definitive final match.

Putting the narrative aside, the animation was of course beautiful. The Bronze dressed mammoths and vast set-designs were incredible - there's nothing you can fault when it comes to the art direction. Their attention to detail, scope of material and textural choice, and use of greenscreen to achieve those more ambitious shots were all very impressive.

I am really looking forward to being taught how to create puppets and animate them by Symanowski - it's just a shame the writing of Aardman Studios has gone downhill.

'Jodorowsky's Dune' [ 2013] Directed by Frank Pavich

Now, although this isn't a stop-frame animation, the artwork, concept ideas and passion for this forgotten film left such an effect on me that I had to include it here. 'Jodorowsky's Dune' explores the "unsuccessful attempt to adapt and film Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction novel Dune".

We are lead through from the very first concept ideas, to the storyboarding and the construction of the team right through to the unforunate abandonment of the film. This documentary places a huge emphasis on the concept for this film being so ahead of its time that people feared it. It could've been something that changed the world, that changed the way people thought. Every single person that they presented the storyboard and concept art to agreed, they'd never seen anything like it before and couldn't fault it in any way... but nonethless, no one wanted to fund it. It was too different to any cinema shown at that time, and there's a huge risk in the unknown.

After travelling through the narrative of this ghost of a film, after meeting the characters and enveloping yourself in this world of a stark blue sky and unprecedented artistic direction, I was left quite heartbroken that I'd never actually see what they were describing to me - not in its entirety anyway.

Something even more impressive that the design of the film, was Jodorowsky's hunt for the ultimate team. Artists H. R. Giger, Chris Foss and Jean Giraud were to create the set and character design, Dan O'Bannon on special effects, the likes of Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles and Mick Jagger on the cast and Pink Floyd to create the soundtrack. It was destined to be immense.

Jodorowsky has such a beautiful soul and you could see the pain in his eyes that this film was never born - no matter how much he stated otherwise. He fills you with ambition and fearlessness. After listening to him, the possibilities of what you can achieve as an artist seem boundless.

"My ambition with Dune was tremendous. So, what I wanted was to create a prophet. I want to create a prophet... to change the young minds of all the world. For me, Dune will be the coming of a god. Artistical, cinematographical god. For me, it was not to make a picture. It was something deeper. I wanted to make something sacred, free, with new perspective. Open the mind! Because I feel, in that time, myself, inside a prison. My ego, my intellect, I want to open! And I start the fight to make Dune."

- Jodorowsky speaking in the documentary.

My desire one day is to create this film for him... or at least be part of the team who do so. Perhaps I could inject elements of his work into our animation, we'll have to see.

Side note - A film I'm highly anticipating: Wes Anderson's 'Isle of Dogs' [2018]

Animation Research & Reading

Below are 3 videos I watched in preparation for Unit 5 starting tomorrow, these cover: , how to create a stop-motion video, the 12 principles of animation and some information on the software we're going to be using: 'Dragonframe'.

To prepare myself for creating the puppets [as I'm going to speciliase in Technical Arts in 2nd year], I've taken two books out from the library which belong to a collection written by Tom Brierton. "Stop-Motion Filming and Performance" & "Stop-Motion Puppet Sculpting" were the two available to me.

These books will really come in handy when I begin designing and creating my puppets as they present step-by-step images for multiple techniques. The introductions also cover elements such as narrative, storytelling, character designing and the general atmosphere of an animation. A particular comment I picked up on was on the topic of characters: "Humans are in constant contact with one another daily, and a film audience can much more readily identify with two or more characters relating on screen. Even if you have only one human in your story, a nonhuman entity can play as a character against a human one"..."If a man is the only person on a deserted island, the island itself can play as a character".

In addition to these books, I've also ordered the book 'Struwwelpeter' [1845, H.Hoffmann]. With the choice of narrative being between fables and cautionary tales, I'm definitely leaning more towards the latter so thought it'd be good to have my own copy of the designated book ready.