Kaitlin-Paige Gill

As I mentioned its set in Salem Stat. This was not just to go against the London setting of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but also Salem state is where the infamous Salem witch trials took place and I thought having that extra bit of context might add to the story and make more sense as to why three girls are practicing satanic witchcraft there and the fact the book was there was most likely someone who went to unit there just for the fact its in Salem.

https://www.salemstate.edu/

This show heavily influenced my screenplay. Its a remake of the original series Sabrina the teenage witch which was a 90′s sitcom but the chilling adventures of Sabrina has been adapted into more of a dark- coming of age story which was perfect for what I wanted to represent in my screenplay. I mean who doesn't love a cringe coming of age show. 

Its essentially about a teenage who's about to turn 16. She’s half human and half witch on her fathers side and on her 16th birthday must sign her name into the dark lords book (Satan.) the whole premise is she struggles with her identity and what’s the right path for her. I also really wanted to translate this into my screenplay. I had it so that Evaline and Eva must both come to terms with the fact they've been split apart and represent two completely different sides of one person, and together they must find some common ground and try to fix it.

I decided to read some articles and do some research into how mental health is portrait in mainstream media...

https://www.verywellmind.com/mental-health-stigmas-in-mass-media-4153888

This article was really good and had the point that the most common stigma is that it portrays people with mental health issues as crazy more often than not, when in reality mental health issues are so common and not everyone who has them is “crazy”. This just adds to the stigma about mental health and I believe is part of the reason as to why not many people are as accepting about it as they could/ should be.

This article is about how the portrayal of mental health issues portrait in mainstream media has changes slightly. For the better with some things but not with all so there is still a huge stigma about mental health anyways....

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/your-stories/improving-representations-of-mental-health-on-tv/

“Unfortunately, not all conditions are treated equally in the media. Mental health problems such as depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder are starting to be treated with sympathy and understanding on screen. However, when schizophrenia and personality disorders are covered it’s usually in connection to violence, even though we know that you’re much more likely to be a victim than a perpetrator of violence if you have a mental health problem.”- a quote from the above article.

I totally agree with this and its allot more common to log onto to Instagram or any other social media platform and see support for those with anxiety/ depression. But rarely is it just about the harsh reality of some of the symptoms or side effects as that often needs to be censored which makes sense. Nut I knew I just wanted to so some short animated loops with my experience and the common ness of self-harm and what someone should do if someone they care about may be. As I’ve been in some situations before where my family have found out and really reacted in a unideal (to put it mildly) manner and I think if it was talked about more then more parents/ people in general would know how to react in the best possible way considering the situation.

For my other loop I decided to go with just a regular representation of how it can make you feel which wont need to be censored at all because that in a way can also be open to interpretation where as with the other one the message is as clear as I want it to get before actually animating self harm which there's no way I wanted to.

After deciding that the look will make what my robots purpose is as clear as possible I started looking for inspiration images on Pinterest ....

I liked the idea of having a robots whose purpose is cleaning up the streets  in this dystopian future where there's smog and litter everywhere, barley enough oxygen and the planets dying, so really just gross.

And I found a good texture/ look (on pintrest) I can try and replicate on my robot inside of Photoshop before taking it into After Effects

First I really had no idea what to do so after deciding to focus on the theme of the environment I then picked litter.

So I looked into the deign of some trash cans, modern and dystopian future concept ones.....

I chose more plastic slender ish ones that are just as simple as they can be while serving their purpose, no fancy high tech ones.

After deciding on this I was reminded of Robots the 2005 blue sky animation...

Which is essentially as universe in where everyone and everything is robots and what you see is what you get in a way with most of the characters.

For example the whole premise is robots getting updated parts and newer versions which helps them in their everyday lives.

You’ll notice there's been not much research done for the lip syncs as they were just done quickly during a tutorial session and that's also whey there's not much development on them as I didn't design/ create these character. Millie Woodcock did and we used them as this is only a quick practice project. 

Overall I really like the acting on my characters and I used myself for reference on how they are moving as I put a mirror infront of me and then really exadurated my natural movements. 

Doing it a second time with the addition of a torso and arms was really fun, as I understood the process more and really just went for it. The lip syncs were quite quick and easy to do inside of After Effects and I got the hang of it quite quickly so I could spend the rest of the time on the acting.

If you look in my show reel (inside the personal planning section of this blog) then you’ll see I already have experience with 2D lip-syncs from a short music video I had previously made. So that's also part of the reason as to why I didn't need to do much research into how to do it as I knew the basics.

I have talked about what I was inspired by in my Analysis of the screenplay for my character design......

For another part of the personal planning section we needed to create CV’s and cover letters as if we were applying to a specific job posting. I took most of my old information from my last CV and only really updated that but the Cover letter I wrote with the job opening in mind and the specifications/ qualifications they required....

My reflective learning summary was pretty much a combination of previous posts from my blog. which is why I find it so handy to keep track of my work using a blog....

Another optional thing was the experimental reel, It’s supposed to show the development of your work as time went along. I decided to try and show a bit of development for every animation we did for BA2a which in hindsight it would probably have been better to focus on one or two as there was quite allot of pre-production development stuff I didn't include due to time so in the future I know to focus on less and really show how much work I’ve put into each one as I don't think it came across very well in this video. But on a whole it still serves its purpose.

I decided to edit together a show reel even though its not required for submission anymore. I thought having a bit more practice with doing show reel’s would be good for in the future when I need to be able to do professional ones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BecC9Cbcco

Overall I am quite pleased with the turn out but if this has made me realise anything it’s that the animations I’ve done that I consider to be “good” ones are the ones I’ve done along side uni projects and not the ones for uni. Most of the stop motion section was additional work as all I really needed was a walk cycle but I wanted to practice claymation and the pigeon was just a random animation when I first started using TV paint. 

My screenplay hasn't changed much since the last post on here other than some editing to the dialogue and taking out some of the descriptions as I was over the 1000 word limit. It’s a shame that the word count is only 1000 as I feel without some of those descriptions it doesn't really suck you into the universe as much. The plus side is technically it doesn't mess with the screenplay at all or the narrative so it would be a bigger deal if it was a book I was writing. 

I also changed some of the dialogue between the girls as I didn't think the part where Michi and Kate were poking fun at Evaline really made sense or came across clearly as to what was happening then because of my poor writing skills and it didn't completely fit in with the atmosphere of the rest of the story.

I then worked on my Analysis of the script which is just a combination of things I've learnt, mistakes/ challenges, research and other things that went into making this......

This is the finished animation for my prop turn around.

Even though the brief only really requires a simple turn around I really wanted to add in some kind of animation because I genuinely enjoyed animating the grimoire/ book. There was no real reason behind the skull in itself but I knew I wanted to add in some kind of “magical” thing happening when the book opens as its the same magic filled book that summoned the demon in Eva’s story. 

I wanted to try doing a short little random cycle so I started with doing a quick outline of the plan like that I wanted a skull to appear in a ball of fire and then started animating in TV Paint very messily and sketchy. I’m really glad with the whole concept of the animation as even though it does link to the book its still completely random series of actions for no real reason other than that’s what I thought would look cool. Luckily even if that's an issue behind it then it wont effect my grade as if you take that animation out technically I’ve met all the requirements of the brief. That's why I took the opportunity to play around with some stupid looking animation at the same time.

I thought adding in sound would really add to the overall animation and make it feel as though it’s more than just a prop turn around. I got all the sounds from freesound.org then put them into Audition, edited and then placed them over the animation and then edited to make sure they all fit. I’m really pleased with the sounds for this because I spent allot more time on it than I usually would have because I liked this little project. So, this time I overplayed many different audios and then edited them together so that its more lowkey and not as in your face, I think it gives it a nice atmosphere as its just quietly eerie but nothing too overpowering as the animation in itself isn't that deep.

I decided to re-arrange and update the bible pages a bit so they looked a bit more finished and professional.

This is what they look like now...

I chose to go with the overall theme of greens as I thought it goes well with both Eva and Evaline's colour scheme so it fits with the overall vibe and looks allot more complete than it did before in my opinion.

In todays class with Dan we focused on gesture drawing and quickly getting the form down. This was quite useful and relaxing for practice. Since Covid I’ve not done much life drawing so this was a nice refresh and a new perspective on how to do it which I actually prefer. In these sessions we focused more on pushing the poses and following the line of action.

After going through all my files and checking what else I have left to do I made a new timetable for the last two weeks till submission so I know exactly what I need to be doing each day...…