applied animation: production dairy

20/03/2016 Planning

After selecting the book title i was going to make an opening title sequence, i had to think about what i needed to know and research about the book, i found out many things by reading the book after a long time, so i started brain storming and made a mind map.

so i had an idea of what i was going to do for the animation, After thinking about what i should do about the story and how to go about which characters appear i decided i'd make another mind map of what i should do for the storyboard in the image below,

This mind map explains all that i will be putting in the storyboard and the ideas i have such as camera angles, i also thought about how i could fully portray this book title as an opening sequence, the book had many individual parts about this characters life called Haytham Kenway. I decided to take the key points of his life and showcase them in some form which i had two ideas for. I wanted to do a matrix like how its shown in the game and have the main character walking past his memories as different backgrounds appeared and then reaching the end and the camera pans up and showcases the title of the book.

But then i decided i should not do that because of how complex it would be to create these backgrounds and is copying elements of the game which makes it seem like a game opening which i didn't want, also this was pointed out in the presentation i presented and so i thought about how i could change it and decided i should make it simpler by not doing many backgrounds and getting rid of the matrix idea, instead I thought i should use a key moment from the book.

The new idea I have currently is to showcase the main character entering through a door which leads to a dark area, as he walks through in the dark he remembers his past which i will showcase as memory bubbles next to the character, after the last memory bubble he closes his eyes and at this point the camera fades to black and then the camera is behind him as it tries to focus as the shot is over exposed with light and there you see his father blurred out and his son all looking up to the sky with the book title appearing.

27/03/2016 Storyboard

Here is the storyboard i came up with after thinking about the idea above.

Also when i was producing this storyboard i asked a friend of mine from America to help me out compose a song for this animations which she accepted to take part in, and im grateful for her helping me because i really like her music she composes, here's a quick example of one of my favorites from her music

So the storyboard is only ten scenes long with it only being 30 seconds meaning that each scene should last at least 3 seconds, i did this because i didn't want it to be long and it would make it easier for the composer to work with it and that the music can sync up with the animation.

As you can see I removed two scenes from the actual storyboard because it would make the animation longer then 30 seconds and is not so necessary. so as mentioned before in the last update i followed the idea of having the main character enter a room which was dark and as he walks through hes thinking about his memories (key moments)  which you can see as them memory bubbles then he closes his eyes and reopen to panning up to the title. 

Once i finished the storyboard i made it into an Anamatic which you can view:

 

Its in a gif format so that i could easily send it to the music composer quickly and is not a big file.


05/04/2016 Initial character research and backgrounds



this is some of the research images ive looked at for development of my character....
heres a link https://uk.pinterest.com/bashkun/character-design-assassins-creed-17th-century/ 
I've read the book and it has mentioned what the time period was like and what the British colonies used to wear which is shown in the images in this link. i really like the outfits they used to wear

i also looked up some backgrounds which could help me develop an atmosphere for the main character to walk around in, heres a link to the background mood boards i did https://uk.pinterest.com/bashkun/background-assassins-creed/


11/05/2016 character design

This is my final design for the outfit of my character, tried to keep it as simple as possible so that i could animate him without needing the complex materials which would take a long time to do. As you can see in the drawing above Ive the main character in the book is mentioned to wear a thick coat and a hat, i tried mixing the outfit the soldiers wore at that time and it created this which is simple and showcases the character's strength and authority since that's what is mentioned about him in the book.

19/05/2016  started the animation

The start of the animation and the end of the animation is going to be really difficult because of the background i have to do as he enters a cave and exits this cave. so far this is what the first background looks like.

The camera is going to focus on the background and then focus at my character walking in to the scene from the left, which indicates to the viewer that hes going to enter the cave.

24/04/2016

I animated the character walking on to the scene which i will colour after i make sure the movement is smooth, and that the colours work with the background in terms of lighting and shades.

here is a short gif of the walk towards the cave.

 

hope to finish this scene as quick as possible!!!!!


01/05/2016

i managed to finish the scene above which turned out great along with the 20 seconds i did, unfortunately i did not update here. I manged to get many of the scenes done and thought about how to comply them which is by using after effects, With that set here is a a few screen shots putting the scenes together on after effects, also a few screen shots of the character colouring process.

 This image on the left is showcasing the compiling of scenes on after effects.

this image on the right showcases putting highlights behind him to give the impression of light behind him, this was all animated on clipstudio.






03/05/2016 more research

this was because i was stuck with how i should display the memory bubbles, I found some videos such as the following link https://youtu.be/jSD1qrZCOZ0?t=44s ,

form the 30 second clip in this video you witness still frames which are tweened showing the main protagonists past which gave me the idea of doing still frames that zoom in and slightly move in different direction to get a similar effect in the video for my animation.

I will try and apply this, but it may prove to be challenging.

05/05/2016 finished the animation

The image above is a screen shot of the finished animation, the end result was good and i enjoyed the whole process of making this animation and i hope to produce more like this in the future. I really enjoyed the semi realism style and it worked really well in the end.