Jeff's Blog

Since I am making a video for a musician, I believe the best way to judge the success of the project is the musician’s response to it. I treated the project like I would treat a commissioned job, by asking he artsist what the song was about and bouncing ideas of him. Two days ago upon the competition of the project, I showed Vincent Augustus and he seemed very happy. He went as far as offering a job to work with for his animated album art. So its safe to say Vincent Augustus liked the video and the project is a success.

The title of the Song I am making a video for is called I’m Ready and it is by an artist called Vincent Augustus. The song is about an artist who is suicidal regarding the acceptance/success of his music which is also influenced by the artist’s drug and alcohol use.  This story line influenced the narrative which I used for the video. I made a narrative to show Vincent introduced to his demons after getting ‘high’, have an encounter with them, and eventually become victorious.  I watched foo fighter’s latest video, Chasing birds (2021) which was also about a drug trip to see how they constructed the narrative from the lyrics.

A key choice I had to make for this video was to decide if to use traditional hand drawn animation or rigged/pegged animation. At the end, I decided to go with hand drawn animation as I feel despite it taking longer to make, there is am certain appeal it gives to animations.

A lot of the inspiration for my video was taken from Pinched (Vandervoot, 2015). The inspiration from Pinched ranged from character designs, FX to compositing. Pinched looked like a rough animation with the lines all over the place, but the composition and shots were really good all through. Vandervoot animated a lot in z axis and used the blur effect when necessary to create a sense of depth and to direct the eye where to look at. I also did similar working a lot in z axis and using the same blur effect. I was going for a bit of a 3D feel and I believe these techniques worked well for that purpose.

He also used FX and overplayed a glowing colored effect when trying to show what was going on in the main characters head. I took direct inspiration for this as my character was often ‘in his head’ when he encountered in alter ego.

Pinched (2015)

I also got some inspiration from Robert Valley’s designs for textures. Robert Valley who directed Ice (2020) and Zima Blue (2019) for Netflix’s Love death and robots has a distinctive style in his character designs and textures. So I decided to add some lighting and cross hatching textures to my characters to make it unique just like Robert Valley does.

Ice (2021)

Key animations were taking from a variety of films. For the audience movement I took inspiration from Daft Punk’s one more time (Takenouchi, k & Matsumoto, L., 2000) as I believed it showed how to animate a large number of people in a concert moving to a particular rhythm.

One more time (2000).

For the camera movement in the backgrounds, I looked at Alex Widdoswon’s Music and Clowns (2020) video to see how he did this in his video. from minute 3.50, we can see the camera rotations. 

Music and Clowns (2020)

More than half of the movie was in the concert hall and for that I got inspiration for the hall and its lightening design from an episode of Boondocks (2005) where an artist was also performing on stage. It was helpful to see how the constructed the scene, making the stage light interact with character and background and I proceeded to create mine in a similar way.

Boondocks (2005)

References

Chasing birds (2021). Directed by Emliyn Davis for Bomper studios. Youtube [Online] April 4th 2021. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qYI-RtmYNI [Accessed 20th May 2021].

Ice (2021). Directed by Robert Valley Love, Death and Robots. Netflix. 9th May 2021.

Music and Clowns (2020). Directed by Alex Widdowson. The New York Times [Online] 23rd July 2020. Available from: https://vimeo.com/387733360 [Accessed March 16th 2021].

One more Time (2000). Directed by  Takenouchi, k & Matsumoto, L. Daft Punk. Released 13th November 2000. Daft Trax. Virgin Records. (Viewed 27th November 2020).

The Boondocks (2005). Animated Series. Directed by Aron McGruder. United States: Adult Swim.

Vandervoot, D. (2015) Pinched. Vimeo [Online] 21st October 2015. Available from: https://vimeo.com/122104110 [Accessed April 11th, 2021].

This is the final version of my movie with the credits added at the end. I took my last version and edited it in premier pro, adding dip to black transitions where necessary. I didn’t want any complicated transitions as I believe for this mellow song a dip to black or fxde transition was a perfect fit.

I added a medium scratch effect on the scenes to keep the eye busy and make the video ‘pop’.

Last week, Sony under its Funimation Global group announced that its acquired AT & T’s Crunhcyroll. The purchase price was about $1.2 Billion which shows how much anime streaming is growing.

Ever since I started streaming anime, Crunchyroll and to a lesser extent, funimation where all I knew before Netflix, Disney and other streaming giants got into anime streaming. However Crunchyroll still has a larger catalogue of animation that these giants so Sony Consolidating its strength by purchasing Crunchyroll paves the way for their dominance in the anime streaming business. The CEO of Sony Pictures entertainment stated that his “goal is to create a unified anime subscription experience as soon as possible.” (Dudok De Wit, 2021. Pp. 4) and in the last 5 years have gone about purchasing anime houses and content.

At the time of this announcement, crunchyroll had 120 million registered users with 5 million of them, paying users and funimation has a catalogue of over 700 series and were responsible for distribution and marketing of  6 of the top 20 animated movies in the United states.

While there might be some worry about capitalism in the anime streaming industry, I’m all for all major animes to be accessible on one platform. I don’t want to pay for anime on numerous platforms when I can have it all in one. This is definitely good for consumers like me but possibly a worry for lesser anime streaming services or distribution houses.

References

Marvel based movies and animated shows have been with us for years, however the game finally changed for marvel when Disney bought the Marvel.  In 2009, Disney bought Marvel for $4bn and developed the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) which has been a resounding success over the years revamping its movies particular the Avengers and its individual character movies. The MCU has been focusing on live action since its inception and recently announced its opening a new mini studio under the MCU just for animation (De Duk de Wit, 2021).

With this new mini studio, Diseny plan to release animated contents starting from this year with more to follow and the first animation for this new Mini studio is Marvel’s What if series which was released on Augiust 11th this year on Disney +. I What if is an anthology series focusing on alternative realties for Marvel characters observed by ‘the watcher’ as a consequence for what happened in Loki post multiverse madness.

I watched the first episode last weekend and it was about Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers (Avengers) Army colleague who took the serum instead of him and became ‘Captain Carter’. These are really good stories which explore the possibilities of alternate realities affected by different choices, however one of the stand out things for me was the animation style.

The animation is a collaboration between three independent studios on behalf of Disney. These four studios are Flying bark production, Squeeze animation and blue Spirit.

According to one of the artists who worked on the designs. Brad Winderbaum explained the animation style was heavily infuelnc3d by American illustrator J. C. Leyendecker who was a painter, focusing on magazine covers (Prosser, 2021). In other to get the painted look, they designers used cell shading and rendering 3d objects to look like 2D and cartoonlike. While the animation style has been criticized by fans, I believe it works and gives the show a unique interesting look.

One of the reasons why I think this works is that the MCU has established its characters in live action and a lot of fans now relate to the actors as the actual characters. Like Chadwick Boseman being Black Panther or Scarlett Johansson being black widow. So using 3D is able to give the character proper likeness and the 3 dimensional feel when relating to these known characters. I think regular CGI would have been too boring and regular 2D would have been too cartoon like.  

Marvel announced that with this new mini studio, they would be a lot more animation to come. As a live long fan of Marvel, this is very exciting news and I can’t wait to see what future shows this new studio births. What if already sounds exciting and I am also optimistic that other shows would just be as exciting.

 References

De Duk de Wit, D. (2021). Marvel Is Opening A ‘Mini’ Animation Studio. Cartoon Brew [Online] July 22nd 2021. Available from: https://www.cartoonbrew.com/studios/marvel-is-opening-a-mini-animation-studio-207218.html (Accessed July 23rd 2021).

This is the final production Update before the final movie.  I started recoloring scenes and and I also overlayed the scenes with purplish blue to fit with my color pallet. I proceeded to add shade in the backgrounds to give a bit more depth and appeal

I also worked a bit more of the lighting and texturing effects on the characters to get the textures I was going for. For the shade, i decided to cross hatch rather than flat colored to make to give it a unique feel. The inspiration for the texturing was Robert Valleys art style as seen in Ice (2021).  

References

I finished the full post production on the major move project yesterday and I can say the film is finally complete. My blog has been constantly updated throughout the term and I also wrote posted my final forefront post yesterday.

So looking back at the Gantt chat I’m somewhat on course to complete all the tasks I have set out to do.

Since the formation of the MCU after Disney acquisition in 2009, the MCU has kept on expanding. Last week, they released their first ever full length preschool series on Disney Junior and Disney Channel.

It’s called Spidey and his Amazing friends and its features Peter Parker, Gwen and Miles who form team Spidey as they go on their adventures as young heroes. They often team up with members of the avengers to fight bad guys while learning teamwork is way to go.

The show has moral character lesson for preschoolers, highlighting the bad characteristics in the villains as a way of making kids learn good moral values. The villains aren’t as sinister as we are used to them with the ‘evil’ traits dumbed down for preschoolers. We have Doctor Oak who is bossy, Rhino who likes taking other peoples things and Green Goblin who like to spoil people’s fun (Sarto, 2021).

The animation itself is executive produced by Harry Wilcox who is a Marvel animation heavy weight who has worked on some of Marvels biggest shows and the animation was by Canada’s Atomic Cartioon studio (Sarto, 2021).

This is a good idea and its part of MCU’s assault on the superhero entertainment. They have captured the hearts of teens and adults like myself and now are going for the kids tom make them lifelong Marvel fans.

 References

In July this year, Mila Kunis released and animated series called Stoner cats under her studio, Orchard farm Productions. Stoner cats is an adult animated a show about 5 house mischievous cats who smoke ‘Weed’ and  live and take care of their Sick owner who has Alzheimer’s disease.

What makes the show an forefront animated show is that its exploring new ways of distribution by making the show available to only NFT owners. That is you would need to buy a Stoner cat NFT to watch the show and this NFTs can also be resold. (Alexa, 2021).

It is not a low budget show by any stretch, as it has Seth Macfarlane, Chris Rock, Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis herself all voicing characters. Interestingly, Vitalik Buterin, the Co-founder of Ethereum is also voice acting.

The first episode of stoner Cats was Released on 28th July as 10420 NFTs and within 30 minutes, kits sold out. Each episode was sold for 0.35 ETH (Ethereum) which is about $800 and the Total sale generated over $8m.

The thing about NFTs is that they can be resold on a secondary market, so it gives a chance for fans who believe in the show to earn much more If the series is successful.  Currently on Opensea, a person who purchased a ‘Ms Stoner’ NFT for 0.35ETH ($800) is currently reselling for 30ETH ($69k).  With this resale price tag and similar on other Stoner cats NFT’s, its obvious that fans believe the show would be a success and more valuable in the future with a 2.5% of very secondary sale going back to the creators (Redman, 2021). This definitely cuts off middle men and big media companies giving a direct link connection between the show creators and fans.

According to Mila Kunis, these NFTs would be a life time pass for all future content from the studio and thus a potential for earn serious money for early investors in the future. (Redman, 2021).

With the world getting to into the crypto frenzy in recent times, I think this is a brilliant innovative way to tackle distribution.

I only found out about NFTs last year, when I heard people were selling artwork for ridiculous amount of money through NFT and its no surprised to see an animated show look to NFT for its distribution. NFT are relatively new and I don’t fully understand it but I believe with NFT, there is a large market for people who want to own a part of entertainment history.

As a content creator, I am interested in how this experiment pans out and its success is showing me ways to ‘reverse-finance- content without seeking external investment at the cost of a reduced profit margins.

  References

Alexa, L. (2021). Mila Kunis’ Animated ‘Stoner Cats’ Series Released as NFTs. Animation News Network [Online] July 29th 2021. Available from: https://www.awn.com/news/mila-kunis-animated-stoner-cats-series-released-nfts (Accessed August 5th 2021).

Sawnner, R. (2021). Mila Kunis and Vitalik Buterin Star in the First NFT TV Show. Lets eat Cake [Online] July 26th 2021. Available from: https://www.letseatcake.com/stoner-cats-nft-tv-show/ (Accessed August 5th 2021)

This video is the full completed animation which I finished yesterday, the 4th of August.

I have been animating side by side with composition and FX so there isn’t too much FX and composition to add anymore. I would however take the next one week to work on more post production including coloring, light and shadow effect and any extra other composting technique I would need to add.

I am exploring stylized animation, so I’m using a Toon boom particle system to create  a lighting effect  and the cross hatching  brush tool multiplied to make to a shade effect. All this should be completed in the next 7 – 10 days.

So an updated Gantt Chat, has been finishing all post production by the 14th of August giving me 4 days to focus on my my promotional video, Presentation and possibly touch up on my blog if I have to.

Earlier this year, Kathlean Kennedy, who is the president of Lucas Films announced that in September this year, they would Release Start wars Visions on Disney Plus. Now star wars Visions is a 9 episode anthology series produced by 8 leading animation studio is japan and it would be produced with Japanese anime aesthetics (Bankhurst, 2021).  These studios would provide a new creative angle to the tales in a Galaxy ‘far far way’.

As an anime and Star Wars franchise fan, it would be great to see these stories told in this aesthetic and I am certainly looking forward to it. However, the biggest interesting point here to me is that each of the episodes would be different and produced by different studios.  

Using different studios and animation style and designs would give a refreshing look to each episode and the possibility of being undone by another studio could push studios to give their best works .

In 2019; Love death and robots was released and it was the first ever anthology animated series that I ever saw created by multiple studios per episode and I loved it. Ever Since then we have seen other animated shows take a similar path with Marvel looking to do so in its What if Series and now Lucas films with Star wars visions.  While Love death and Robots isn’t the first of its kind, I believe its success is partly responsible for the new rise of anthology animated shows.

 References

I started animating about two years ago when I was trained on Puppet/rigged animation on Toon Boom Harmony and prior to this course, I had only made rigged animation.  I felt like hand drawn animation would take too much, also that the time that making correction would be a pain and I would struggle with the consistency in the character drawings.

However despite my concerns, looking at my course mates’ movies earlier in the course encouraged me try out hand drawn animations as I saw the flexibility it gave them. I was inspired and as a result of this, I tried out hand drawn animation for the first time in my light and shadow project and I have been encouraged by my progress in hand drawn animations ever since. I also completed my first hand drawn freelance commissioned job earlier this year.

 My major movie project would also be a landmark for me in mixing hand drawn animation and advanced compositing techniques and I’m excited to see how that turns out.

Over the years, animation has gotten more main stream and is used for various purposes. We have seen it used for movies and shots, medical uses, branding, advertisement etc. and it’s not just for kids anymore rather there is animation for all audiences.

Over the weekend, HBO aired the first ever fully animated stand-up comedy special. Its called Drawn (2021) and its features Tig Notaro, An Emmy and Grammy nominated stand-up comedian telling her jokes in cartoon form.

This is a big millstone for animations as I have seen stand-up comedians use animated clips for a few seconds or minutes added to their show, I have also seen animated satire news as seen in CBSs’ Tooning the news but there has never been a fully animated standup comedy.

I think this a brilliant idea as animations have the potential to make a joke sound way funnier through two of its core principles:  Exaggeration and Appeal. The scenes for Notaro tales were reconstructed using animated exaggerations in an appealing way.  This in addition to Notaro compelling narration skills worked magic.

For this innovative project, Notaro contracted Six points harness to produce the animation and the delivery of this animation was really good.  Six points harness has a good reputation for innovation animation concepts like they did for Hair love, Waffles + Mochi and Lazor World.  For this project Greg Franklin, the creative director of six harness led the direction with a team of more than 150 animators.  I particularly liked the choice of using different animation styles for different scenes.

The animation ranged from hand drawn cartoon style drawn 2d animations, to Disney style CGI animation, to Claymation to doddle animation and stop motion amongst others.  These different animation styles gave a refreshing feeling to each scene and helps to hold the audience attention.

I believe this innovative approach taken by Notaro would see other comedians or People in media and entertainment would look to animation to help tell their stories. This means more animation jobs for animators as we are currently seeing with the current animation boom.  This concerns me as I am always encouraged to see animation get more main stream and possibly providing more jobs for me and other animators worldwide

 References

Here I started exploring with my background designs to make it less flat. I adjusted the color layer over the line layers in the background to make the lines not show most times and even when it shows, it’s a very small narrow line. I also added more FX to the characters and Scene. 

Tellretell’s Hidden in the peach blossom Garden was released in June this year in the Taiwan Animated by TAICCA program agency 2001. For this shot, Tellretell used MOFAC’s innovative AI tools to change the pre-production process from the traditional way it has always been done ( Geiger, 2021).

In the mid-90s Walt Disney understood the significance of emotional engaging stories thus promoting him to use storyboard to design and plan the movie to achieve this before the production process begun. Storyboarding has continued to be used for animation and live action ever since then and its often said the movie is a s good as done when the storyboard is made.

While animation and the production process has evolved over time, the pre-production process particularly the storyboarding has remained constant.

MOFAC, a studio in Korea sought to introduce using AI and Virtual reality to replace the storyboarding process. According to MOFAC, they “embraced real-time animation due to the inefficiencies arising from the traditional animation workflow, where storyboarding, asset creation and shot production took place in a relatively linear fashion: misinterpretation was costly and iteration was inefficient “ (Geiger, 2021.pp. 7).

They explained that this method enabled to alter decision more flexibly and cheaper than traditional processes. This is an innovative way approach when you consider tight schedules and budgets in comparison to the volume of work.

Digital puppetry as seen here is one the methods used to assist the story development process through pitching concepts, charcters , assets and examining audicence engagement and this was the process adopeted by Tellretell’s Hidden in the peach blossom Garden.

Innovation is always required in animation for various reasons from wanting to the movie look better, or look unique, to cutting the time its takes in pre-production, production or production phases or how work with tighter budgets and Time frames. However I do wonder how much time or cost is saved when using AI to replace the storyboard process. It almost feels to me like that merge advantage is not worth replacing a storyboard process.

It could be another case of the machines taking over the humans jobs, leading to fewer opportunities for storyboard artist in animation. I am curious to see how this method develops over in the years.

References

This is current update after inking and partly coloring the audience.   For the audience, I didn’t want to make too many movements, so as not too add too much extra animation. I used two extreme poses for each member of the audience and three in-betweens each which were all looped to flow with the rhythm of the instrumentals. I did similar for the crowd for the Ariel view but with more characters and variety in them.

Initially I had planned for the camera to rotate behind Vincent to show his view on the audience as per my storyboard, but I had to discard this idea as there wasn’t enough time on the timeline to do that. If I did a couple of scenes would have been rushed to fit in the timeline and the timing on the scenes would have been off, so I had to find a way around it. I decided to make the camera just move past Vincent and onto the audience.

Looking back at it now, I’ll have to make some correction on the eyes of a couple of them to make them all stare in the same direction. I would also add some blinking of eyes to give more life to the audience.