Logan Fitch's Animation Emporium

So this version now has sound. I’m not too sure I like the music quite yet, but I’ve been told that it works. So, I’ll rerecord something that works a little more for me in the future. Nevertheless, I do thank Briana Bonifacio very much for the voice work. Nikki has a voice! It’s been quite a long while for me getting to this point, and I’m super excited about it. But there’s still a lot more work that needs to get done. More boards, some anatomy fixes, and I also need to swap out lines so that they fit the new draft of the script (We did record those!)

First pass of the animatic. I know there need to be more boards to this. But seeing it in the way it is now seems pretty hopeful, to me. I need to add the ending, and I also need to add sound. Lots of things just need to be added, that’s it. I did get word that there should be more in the voidspace. I’m really hesitant on that notion, because I want the focus to be on Nikki and the reflection. I’m way afraid that if I add any more, it’ll be too much

Here are the final beat boards, because it’s animatic time. It’s already looking much stronger than I thought it ever would, but there are also some things that seem a bit off. I’m not exactly sure what, though. Nevertheless, I did find a solution to the voidspace problem, and having Nikki trip through the mirror and into the voidspace really helps. It admittedly feels to me a bit more like something out of Steven Universe, rather than the OK KO clip that I based it on. But I’ll take it anyway

 We had to create beat boards, and it was pretty dang difficult to get all of the ideas I wanted down into twelve boards. This is going to be quite a project, and if it’s going to mean that I need to convey a story within only these amount of key shots, it’s going to be harder than I thought before. I’ve already brought these to someone who’s already seen an even earlier pass of this story, and she already had some things to say about it. Most notably, that the symbolism in everything needs to be turned up to eleven. I do agree with that, and I have some ideas about it. She’s also confused about the voidspace itself, so I’ll try and see if I can figure something out about that. I’ve also taken a note from her lecture, that if I want a shot to be dramatic, then don’t have it very flat and utilize foreshortening. But if I want a gag, make it flat. So, I’ve changed some boards so that they’re more dynamic.

I’ve been gone for a while, huh? And what have I been doing? Precisely this. Here, I’ve got a new version of Nikki, except this is Nikki as Kyle, before all the initial transition stuff. Actually, this is all the story of how it happens. A bunch of messing around with clothes to find the right identity. I know, especially as a trans person myself, that this really is a very crude way of describing it. I have other ideas in mind for how I’m going to cover the other, more complicated parts of it, but none of that exactly matters. Everyone starts somewhere. I did, my friends did, and so did Nikki. There are quite a few iterations of clothes I’ve got Nikki in (from here on out, I’m just going to refer to Kyle as Nikki. Just saves me the trouble of having to remember). My favorite out of the bunch is the sunhat. Nikki’s not exactly as averse to sunlight as I am, so maybe I’ll include this in later pieces.

Here’s my final submission for the group project.  My main focus was honestly just getting it so that there were finished frames in the entire sequence. Then, I could go back and add more frames, if needed. This way, I managed to animate the button and the firework, which honestly came last second. I still needed a way to evoke a lot going on, and while it’s very simple, fireworks are a very special kind of thing.  I think it works, but I also wish I gave myself more time for more frames, especially when the door opens. I still need to work on form control, after all. Nevertheless, I’m still proud of it as it’s the first thing I’ve made with camera movement. Funny how that happened. I started off with camera movement, decided against it, then ended up with simpler camera movement, anyway.  I mostly just want to do better than this in the future.

So, it’s all done now. And I managed to do it with a day to spare, which is a record! This might have been the first semester I’ve ever had where I’ve worked on everything across the board, and really looked at the bigger picture of things. I think that helped more than anything else. Doing sound design for the first time was also rather fun. I blasted it all in 2 and a half hours, and I’d definitely would have done more foley and looking for sound effects if I’d given myself another week or so, asking people what they needed then. My animation for the project itself is clearly lacking, and it definitely would have done better with more frames put in, but it’s been a balancing act between that and literally everything else about this project. I had to remind myself that the biggest focus of this was working in a group rather than your own individual entry. That’s definitely something to take into next year. My previous experience as an editor helped me with both sound, and when Kat needed help with something. I’d forgotten just how much of it was about what file type would produce the right results, based on what you needed. The industry report proposal was easy to write up, but I ended up finding myself frustrated that I would need to find a much older source from NUA’s library database just to source on Blockbuster’s financial model, which I’ve known since I was a small child (okay, a very small child. Okay, I mean when I was 5). It’s heartbreaking when you find that all the articles and such that you find will only report on the downfall of the giant that loomed over your early days. Overall, this week has been just absolutely crazy, but I managed to work everything in by really, really breaking it down and focusing on a specific thing for one or two days. By the end of Tuesday, it became just a bunch of small, easy-to-do things. I know the industry doesn’t work quite that nicely, but if I can do it like that as much as I can, then maybe I have a shot. Here’s hoping I graduate and make it into next year! And now, I will wait until tomorrow to turn everything in, and then go see Detective Pikachu. For research, of course.

This here is the timeline I ended up with in Audition for the sound design for our group project. Granted, here - I didn’t put in any music. This is all purely sound effects, and my own voice.  I’ve done this before, but I think I sound far better in this one. That’s kind of the elephant in the room, though. Because the studio mics recorded very quietly, I had to bring the volume down on literally every sound effect I gathered. Some of these, I had to bring down multiple times. It was rather difficult to try and really get a good sense of how it all mixed like that.  I started off with simply putting in the sound effects I had, looking over the notes I made for each person when I talked to them (which admittedly was this week). And then timing them so they worked well. I’d previously made a composite sound for the eye blinking, so I knew then that it’d work. Everything else though, had to be done within that timeline.  I also had to figure out how to make the voiceover go through both channels. It took a bit of figuring out, but- Okay, I admit here, I had it, and it took me a good 4 minutes to figure out that I really just needed to exit out of the window in which I was managing the effects. I did this by track rather than by clip, so that I only had to work it out twice. After putting in what was already there, I had to make what wasn’t - In other words, foley.  There was a lot of paper rustling and wind that was needed, so most of it was me just messing around with pieces of paper and plastic in front of my microphone. I also had to make a snake hiss (so yes, I did the “voice” of the snake as well). For the bugs crawling, I rapped my fingernails on a wooden spatula.   I tried making more whoosh sounds, as I’d been able to do it before. Strangely, I couldn’t manage it this time around, and so for the part where England winds to America, I used a winding clock sound (which I admit, I stole the idea from a Dragonball Z Abridged transition. I can’t remember the episode in which to link, though. Sorry) It came out rather well in the end, and the group seems to like it. I’m very thankful for that. I kind of wish there was a way to make it so that the voiceover was louder, but I never want to mess around with that, and risk ruining the audio.

We just got back. We just got back??? And there’s only one week left? And I still have to finish the industry report proposal, and a lot of the collab project still needs to be done, and oh boy, there’s quite a lot to do. Really, I have a lot to be doing, and I should probably stop typing this. See you next week. Will update then.

So now that I’ve finally realized my skills might be suited best for storyboarding, what do i want my website to look like? Well, I’ve already taken a look at a few examples, including the one person I know in LA. His site is rather old though, but it might give some good idea of what to put in there, content-wise. The others are mostly examples from Google. I notice one pattern is that these websites tend to be either white or a very light color. I don’t like the background of my website being entirely white or black or even gray. I’ve tried all those in the past, and they don’t really suit me. So I’ll go with my light purple motif. Another is that the description on these websites are very, very short. No essays at all. Simple to read so that the client can just get right onto the meat and potatoes. Now, what should be the meat and potatoes? I know for sure I’ll be including my life drawing, as that was something mentioned by Blue Zoo when they came over. Not just the figure stuff, but all my best life drawings around me over the past few years. And I’ll update the site as I draw better ones. Obviously my animation will go here, as well. I’ll put in the inanimate object project and the bestiary project, at least. Storyboards will also be in here, the best ones I can find. I might have to contact 321 Fastdraw if I can share my draft storyboards, though. I also want to include comics and parts of Tokens, especially. This is the big project I’m working on over this longer period, and I might as well upload some sheets from that and some potential storyboards I have in mind. I won’t be uploading the comic to that itself, as I want that to stay separate, but I do think that demonstrating how I’ll translate it from the comic format to animation storyboards will show potential clients a skill I’ve been developing over the years, and also maybe get them interested in the project itself. Some other story artists have examples of illustrations. I want to do that as well, as illustrations are for me, mostly, an exercise that I want to really flesh out into something people can really sink their teeth into. I know my skills in that are still in the infant stage, but doing simple drawings and turning those into simple illustrations that might turn into some more complex ones later on might be helpful, but I can’t get too carried away.

http://www.sarahvettori.com/ - Sarah Vetton http://www.toonmanland.com/resume.html - David Tuber I see a pretty wide range of work in all these, honestly. Some storyboards by these people are as mentioned, more like painted concept art rather than simple sketches that get the idea across. I think this has a little more to do with the difference between film boards and storyboards though, as I see storyboards tend to be far more rough by the animatic phase. I think the best I personally can do here, is gather some of my own best storyboards from school projects and my internship, and display them, updating the website as I get better and get more work. I hope to make Tokens play into this as well, as I’ve mentioned before.

I just hope in the future, I can actually do this kind of thing within the 2 weeks of being given the brief. Otherwise, it’s going to be a liability.

Why do I always try and skirt around the obvious places? I thought beforehand that I was going to try my hand at concept design, bought and read a book on that, and informative as it was, it didn’t seem like my kind of thing. Granted, I wouldn’t complain being a concept artist. It means drawing just about everything you can find, but that’s kind of the problem. I’m seeing a lot of places saying that when you start off, you’ll be doing rocks and stuff, and redoing the same rocks, and chairs, and tables, and… I know I need to brush up on my skills about those anyway, and I’m surely not advanced enough to make a convincing looking table at this point. Everything I do is cartoony, and that’s partly good, and partly an issue that I’ll need to come back to. I need to learn more contrast, more values, and even more about how color works before I even think about concept design. In the meantime, I know I’ve got a comic in the works. I know I have at least a tiny, tiny bit of experience of storyboarding in the industry already. I love comics, and I take great inspiration from them. Doesn’t it seem obvious to be the place to go? I certainly think so. It’s exactly the mistake I made when I was spending 2 years in a regular film school. Sure, my skills in general filmmaking were more solid than when I might have just tried animation from the get-go, but it still took me so long to figure out that I wanted to do animation more than just regular film! I know a story artist in the industry already, too. I’ve already gotten so much advice from him, and if I continue down this road, it might be in my interest to badger him more often. It’s also the best way to really showcase the one thing I’ve been told I’m good at in regards to this kind of stuff, which is expression. I love doing expressions, both facial and body. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve now got a few favorite expressions, and I try to work them out the most, and then I’ll move onto another one at some point. I think I was hesitant at first because this is one of the most competitive parts of the industry. I hear so often how animation students want to be story artists, and from my own perspective as a geek and as someone who loves visual storytelling, I can’t blame them! This isn’t to say I’m not up to the challenge of trying to tackle this area, but I usually think that those people are the ones who deserve the position more - They’re the ones who work since their teens to get to this spot! I’m just floundering about, figuring out where in animation I even want to be in. Yet, the person I know in LA nearly faceplanted into the role. The nice thing about trying to get into this role is that there are loads and loads and loads of sources, websites and such that give advice, tips, the basics, dos and dont’s, and all sorts of information you need when you’re trying to get into that role. The other nice thing? Well, I already know what I need to work on. I need to do more background art, more drawings of places in general, evoke a specific emotion into my pieces, working more with 3 point perspective, all that stuff. I can do some okay figure drawings and expressions, and that’s about it. And that’s good, up to a certain point. I need to draw much, much more. And I know that goes for any role here, but going for this role means I always know where my work is cut out and how I’m going to do that.

I’m not sure how much there is to report on this week. The Coraline project hasn’t really updated that much and we haven’t gotten much further. I’ve started working on cleaning up frames and really getting them to look more finished (compare this to last semester where I did this far too late into the game). I don’t have many frames right now, so it’s not a big undertaking. I just want this to get going, really. I also just started having some good ideas for the animated loops, so I’ve done storyboards for them and finally, two of them work. I still need a third. I’m pretty disappointed that I couldn’t think of good ideas until now, though. Also, maybe concept design isn’t my thing. If not, then I need to figure out what else to model my website after. I don’t really want to be drawing rocks and chairs my entire life.

It’s Easter week. Everyone seems to be more focused on that, so I haven’t heard anything from the group. I’ve been reading a book about concept art, and it seems like it’s something I might want to get into. But there’s a lot in it, and it covers all the questions I could want to ask. I’ll definitely be keeping a hold on it to refer back to. I’m also hearing from my fiance that he wants to start up a company, which is a very different path from what I’m studying right now. I kind of wish he said this was a more solid plan earlier on, so that I could tackle that. Maybe doing this streaming stuff might help. I certainly hope so.

Here’s my first animatic of my part of the visual essay.  I ended up using the 2nd idea from the last set of storyboards, after our first meeting. I think it works, mostly. The problem I have when looking at this is that when it goes through, the big Coraline face beyond the door just looks like I went back into the room I just came in, which is not the intention at all, here. I like the portal door idea, though. I also saw some other people’s animatics were scrolling, and I might be breaking some rule in the brief by not doing that.  Back to the drawing board, I guess.

So I went back to the drawing board on this. I looked at the project title, which is “Animator’s Emotions”.  I drew up some strange creature wearing headphones and a hat, jamming to some music; a completely exasperated cat; and a bear which throws each and every idea in the bin.  I think the cat idea works. I’ll have to see if it does in After Effects. That’s where I tend to get hung up, here. I might have a nice idea that works on paper, but just doesn’t translate well into the final piece, and the thing is, I really want these to work. I want people to look at my stuff and want to use it. I know these are simple emojis, but still.  The bear idea seems a bit too complicated for the tiny screen, and the headphone guy just doesn’t work at all here on paper.  Why can’t I get this right?