This week I caught everyone up with how to colour the shots and techniques that I found worked to create our desired look. Throughout the entire project, I have been helping everyone achieve the style of Love Letters. Pretty much every day I do some form of directing through the group chat, which I don’t mind for the most part, but there have definitely been a few days where I have wished that people would leave me alone and not ask for feedback. I think that this is the only problem with having a workgroup messenger linked to your phone. We maybe should have set some boundaries, like no work talk after 7pm or something. Most of the time I don’t mind people coming to me for help on shots, I’d rather they did it face to face though, it makes it much easier to explain myself.

I think that having the role of art director has been a good learning experience, it hasn’t completely killed my desires to one day be an Art Director, so that’s good. It’s certainly informed me of a few things I didn’t know before. Along with having a cut off time for work messenger, I’ve also learnt a few methods of helping people understand work processes to achieve a certain outcome, pushed along by Arcus studio at ANI WIP. On top of this, I have also learnt the struggles of having to go back and forth between design ideas. Whilst this was infuriating to get through at the time, seeing how it is coming along and how the project mostly looks like it belongs together is particularly rewarding. I am quite proud of how it is developing and even though I spent a few weeks more stressed than usual, I think it was worth it. 

Along with starting the colouring process I have also been helping Liam do some catch up on his shots. To do this I ended up taking both the market shot and Doggo Park shot off his hands for colouring. He did finish the Puppet Man shot on his own, which was something that we agreed upon when we adjusted his work load. It was important that he got to finish some shots on his own. Considering I had already finished off the colouring in my own shots, I found doing this relatively straight forward. I did struggle with the Doggo Park shot. Once I had tidied the backgrounds I got to colouring. This shot really gave me some issues, it was and still is coming across especially flat and I think it looks really out of place when side by side with other shots. I tried deepening the colours in places to try and force the depth but no matter what I do it doesn’t want to look better. I tried adding a bush in the foreground to add more depth, which has helped slightly, but I think the bush looks slightly out of place.  

In our last presentation, we got feedback on the Jarrolds shot, as a group, we agreed that the shot would have to change in some way. Cat suggested the idea of having birds in the background of the shot; we all thought this was a good idea. Fin then proceeded to suggest that the birds should be Swifts, which I agreed with but Fin misunderstood and thought that I was saying they wouldn’t be swifts; I was actually saying that there wouldn’t be much detail on their bodies as they would be far away. Eventually, we got on the same page but it took me animating the keyframes for him to understand what I was on about. He got very defensive of his swifts. 

We also decided as a group that the people in the bottom window should be removed as they were too low in the shot. We also agreed to remove the other birds that were already in the shot because they were easily unnoticeable with the addition of the swifts. Fin was initially not completely on board with removing the birds but I pointed of that the flags were a character and that I always thought that this shot should resonate peace rather than busy. After which he agreed, especially once he say the keyframes of the swifts that I had completed. 

I found a few videos of swifts to help me with this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd3NlfbA7yQ https://vimeo.com/100939500 ). These videos really speed up the process of animating the rough, they helped me to see how a swift looked from far away and close up. It also showed me how they moved in circles. When doing this they are actually hunting for insects, a fact that I didn’t know until I completed some research. I did have to ask Fin more questions about how they moved, he knows a lot about birds. I couldn’t find any detailed footage of swifts turning. Fin informed me about how they moved their wings to adjust for tight and quick cornering; I also found out that if they don’t corner correctly that they can break their wings. Overall I’ve learnt a lot about swifts. 

Along with finishing the tie-down animation for every shot, I also began the colouring process. I test run how we should be doing this, which layers should be boiling and which ones shouldn’t. The order of the layers is also important as well, especially when it comes to the buildings, blush and light. The blush needs to be below the buildings so that it is more like it’s a hint of pink in the building colour and then going up into the sky. The lights need to be above the buildings and everything else so that the colour isn’t muddied by them; so that they are bright and noticeable. Over the top of the background lines, there should also be window lighting that boils, this is only applicable for the night shots. 

At the start of Easter he group decided to have a meeting where we discussed how the look of Love Letters. We made sure that everyone is on the same page and made it clear how the characters had to look. We came to the conclusion that Els, Cats and my own shots had characters that fit the look of the film. This led to us agreeing that we would continue forward as we had been. 

We also discussed how we wanted to make sure that Fin and Liam maintained the style. We weren’t as worried about Fin’s shots, as he had shown that he could do the style previously when helping El with the character design. However, we were worried about Liam’s shots. We know that he sometimes struggles with style and consistency so we wanted to make this as easy as possible for him. We agreed that Liam would work alongside Fin to get a better idea and allowing Fin to show him how it had to look. We also talked about how we would all pitch in to improve his work and help him in the future if it was needed. 

We are still managing to communicate effectively as a group and we are also all making an effort to be present in the bigger group meetings. This has been really helpful in ensuring that we all know where we are each at in the pipeline. It would be nice to have more time together in the labs as a group, this would help us help each other when it comes to giving feedback on the shots and explaining more clearly what we think needs changing.  We have been able to do this a small amount but the first half of this unit has been busy for both Fin and Liam outside of university.  Maybe this means that El, Cat and I just have no lives. Either way, we have been managing so far to get work done. 

Last week we had agreed as a group that we were happy with how the colours were looking and settled on a colour script that we liked. Being happy that we had settled I continued the rest of my week doing other tasks, even went to London for a few days with Cat and El for Screen South. 

However, on our last day in London, we received an ominous message from Fin in the group chat saying how they needed to have a discussion about the style of Love Letters going forward, this was worrying for a few reasons. 

On the Friday of the week, Fin had a talk with Jon and Helen about Love Letters and they mentioned how the saturated colours distracted from the backgrounds and the soft movement. Which I completely understand and do agree with, I’m just upset that I have to go back and do it again. I will do it again though and from what Fin said it sounds like he wanted to really strip it back to something similar to one of my earlier iterations. Which, again, I don’t mind but from the sounds of it he hadn’t been happy with the look of the colour scripts but he didn’t say. Ultimately, it seems like something that could have been resolved earlier on had he mentioned it sooner. I understand his reluctance though, it’s always a bad position to be in, especially when you don’t want to upset someone. 

We agreed that we would allow for a few more days to be spent on colour, as it is important to the success of the message of the film. However, we also disagreed with another area of Fins ideas on the look of the film. He mentioned how he wanted to try drawing the backgrounds of the Film traditionally and maybe colouring them in the same way. Unfortunately, the rest of the group and I agreed that it was too late for this especially as at the end of the week it would be Easter. Also, for the most part, the backgrounds had been completed and would require us to go back and re-do even more work. We would have also had to develop a way to keep the colouring consistent throughout the shots if we did it this way. 

With the colour script, we agreed that it all had to be much subtler and softer. One of the issues that I will have to overcome is how the current brushes stop the design from being subtle, so I will re-work this in Photoshop and adjust to suit. I worked off of an earlier version that I completed and kept in mind that we want it to look more like water colours.  

This week I completed a colour script for all of the shots We decided as a group that it would be wise if I were to go through each shot and complete thumbnails for where the colours would be going before we each go forward into colouring. In doing so we all agreed that the grey of the buildings is quite overwhelming, however, I think that this is mostly because the brush in Photoshop is completely different from the TVpaint brush. Other than that, the feedback seemed to be good, which means that we should be able to continue forward into the next stage with the backgrounds soon. 

I really like to see all of the shots next to each other like this, it would be quite nice to include a tidy version of this on my website. 

Upon discussion, in the group chat, we agreed that it would be wise to repeat the colour script in TV Paint to really get a feel for what it will look like in a sequence. I also think that it would be a good idea to add any effects that we think need to be added in after effects. After completing the thumbnails, we decided that it would be wise to spend one more day on figuring out if we were fully happy with the look. This time we decided it would be more important to do this in TVpaint so that we could get a better feel for how they would look in sequence. In doing so it did reassure us that the grey wouldn’t be as overwhelming. 

Doing this also highlighted some areas that we needed to be cautious of in the future, specifically in the colours of the characters clothing mixing in with the backgrounds. This is something that needs addressing when El and Fin complete the character Tool Kit. I won’t address it personally any further, as I have given an idea of the colours that could be used in the colour script. We all seem fairly happy with where the colours are now, I haven’t been told any different, so I’m hoping that we can move forward in the process. 

I went full Art Director this week by giving feedback and quality control on the backgrounds as they have all been finished. We all agreed that doing this was important for consistency. Cat and I decided to take it upon ourselves to do this task as this week has been busy for the others, especially for Fin and El who got stuck overnight in London after the Blue Zoo trip.  Whilst writing up the notes, I didn’t want to upset people but I understand that it’s important to give feedback. So I did add little jokes in the way that I wrote it. Normally our group is good at taking feedback but recently, with people getting stressed and being at home for feedback, it has resulted in a little bickering. So I kept it fairly relaxed to avoid that.

I am normally the person that gets designated to give feedback to people when it’s something that they might not like to hear. So I’m kind of used to it now but sometimes I don’t want to be the one in charge of it. It also makes me wonder if there is feedback that people won’t give me for the same reason. 

I also continued to complete rough movement on the playhouse shot, both close up and wide. I planned out the movements by drawing it out on a sketch layer, I normally work this way before I try and make it move. It makes it much clearer going forward rather than going in blind.  

These past two weeks have been a lot of the same stuff for me, there is basically no research but a whole bunch of critical feedback from everyone.

I took the Cop Shot off of Liam and speed through the process in a fairly quick manner, I would have liked to experiment a little bit more on it but we needed to get the shots to the point where we could composite them. I did manage to experiment with it slightly though, this was mostly with the timings. However, I also experimented with some of the movement. I debated having the Cop struggle to grab the gun at the beginning but eventually decided to cut it as the movement was confusing. I used some reference footage that El helped me with to animate the rough before moving forward with the rough animation but I’m happy with how it has turned out. I don’t think there would have been much point in experimenting further, we discussed earlier in the project the composition of the shot so it was only the actual movement that needed figuring out.

I did have to try multiple times on the Robbers movement. I completed this rough movement for the Robber and I was really happy with it but Liam and Fin weren’t, which was a shame but they had valid points. Fin mentioned that his body was positioned facing too much away from the camera and should be slightly more turned toward the camera. Liam couldn’t really explain why he didn’t like it, he just said that he thought it would be funnier if the robber just moved straight upward. Which I disagreed with, he could move in a more directly upward fashion but I wouldn’t want it to be straight up. 

We discussed for a little while what a better alternative movement would be as the gravity has already stopped working at this point so the robber would need to be holding onto something. Eventually, we came to the conclusion that he should just be turned more and lift his hands completely away from the railing as he turns to face the camera.

I’m still sad that I can’t use this version as I like the movement but I understand and will change it. If anything this is good practice for working under a boss that wants things done in a specific way, even if it might not be the best choice. 

I managed to complete a fair bit of work over Easter, this included lip syncing the Bin Man, tying down, colouring and lip syncing the scientist and doing the same for the toupee man shot. In order for me to go ahead with these shots in this way I also had to first experiment with mouth shapes and style first.

I took my first rough iteration of the mouths and adjusted them so that they fit better with the project style. I did this through matching the line weight to the standard weight used throughout the film, this means that the mouths can be made smaller or enlarged to suit the shots that they will be used for. These mouth shapes should be suitable for max and the scientist. I’ve left individual characters up to the animator, I don’t think that I should have to do mouth shapes for each of them but it was important that the mouths for repeated characters were the same and were consistent.

I found that over Easter we still managed to work effectively, despite being at different points in the country. We had a few disagreements about some aspects of the work, mostly to do with Love Letters rather than Big Up, but generally we managed to resolve these issues by talking it out. Occasionally we did a skype call if we were struggling to communicate an issue or idea. Also, I think that a lot of the bickering was also due to stress. We were all aware that Liam was completely out of the country and unable to complete work, so we understood that it was completely possible that we would fall behind on work, something none of us want.

I continued to Tie-down the Bin Mans movement this week, a lot of the rest of this week was spent on Love Letters.  After resolving the issues with his jacket I finally gave him a head. This was challenging to match up with the body’s movement as I wanted it to follow the body but I also wanted it to have some follow through on the downward movement. After some experimentation on the timings I managed to fix the issues I had with it. I initially didn’t like how bobbly the head was, it looked like it was moving wildly and slightly out of time. The group agreed with the changes that were made and encouraged me to take the updated version forward. I also adjusted the hair of the Bin Man, as I hadn’t been conscious enough of how it had been moving, this resulted in it looking too messy on the downward movement, and it was slightly distracting.

I eventually also added the rope to the shot, which was a completely unenjoyable experience. I’d like to never animate a rope again. The rough movement was good enough that I didn’t have to go back and forth a lot, however, due to how close the lines were and the thickness of the rope itself it made it really easy to see if it got bigger or smaller. This meant that if I stopped paying attention for even a second it would look wrong and I would have to go back and re-do it.

I eventually finished the rope and moved onto the colouring of the Bin Man, like I mentioned last week, this process is really straight forward. I did have to animate the lines of the jacket, but that went fairly smoothly. I only had to do back a few times and adjust a line where it had begun to look like it was trying to slip off his jacket. I probably could have stopped this from happening if I had planned out the movement of the lines through roughs. I decided against this because I remember thinking ‘it’s only some simple lines, they’ve just got to move with the jacket’. That’s a dumb and naive thought, next time just do the roughs. Like I said, even without the roughs it wasn’t too bad to do I probably would have saved a little bit of time though.

I did do a small amount of research into lip-sync, I found a few animated videos that I think should influence how we move forward. The group also seem to like the references and agree that aiming for something similar would be nice and should fit the style. (https://youtu.be/wTimGt-e73g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMWiYIVoDis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dop4MTlf_zc )

It seemed like an agreed upon decision that the lip sync should be slightly bouncy and rounded. Over Easter I will experiment further to get an outcome we are happy with.