Music partner discussing music, study task 1

The first time I met Ryan was when the music students came for a visit, we discussed the types of music he creates which were cinematic music. After I told him about my project he instantly came up with ideas for traditional Iraqi Instruments. I'm looking forward to what he is going to create, as what he presented was similar to what I was looking for.

Update, 12/04:

He recently emailed me about the music that he is willing to make for my animation, so I told him what emotions had to be conveyed as I currently didn't have the storyboard fully established and told him I will be sending the anamatic soon.

update, 20/04:

I sent him the anamatic I've made so far so that he had an idea as to what the animation would be like and what the storyline is so that he could emphasise on the sad moments and then happy moments, I hope it sounds good and I'm now excited to hear what he's going to make for the film.

update, 28/04:

He sent over the music, and I really liked it although because I didn't mention I wanted it to be slow paced it turned out to not fit the animations, there's also the fact that its too distracting compared to the audio I've edited to go along with my animation, so, unfortunately, I had to tell him I couldn't use it for the animation, which was a let down on both of us but at least he's able to submit the music he created and I'm also looking forward to working with him on future projects as it sounded amazing.

The music can be found in the folder for submission in its own folder, it's very powerful but does not suit the animation.

colour theory board, study task 1

After having a discussion with my support tutor about my animation and how it was lacking in colour, I came up with an idea of making the shadows/shades a colour of emotion to represent the current feelings in the atmosphere of the story.

I was about to abandon the colour board I created a while ago but instead, it helped when choosing the different emotions. Here's the colour board that will explain:

These colours also reflect the Iraqi colours from the previous colour board.

A team to help me animate, study task 1

I decided to consider asking for help from people I know online, as I felt like I could not complete the animation by myself.

I asked 2 people who were willing to help and set up a server on discord for us to plan the project and fix the animatics, possibly even add scenes to the animations where a scene lingers, such as this scene:

Here's a screen shoot off the server as we discuss how to approach this scene:

Update, 29.04: My friend from Manchester took a bit of time and sped up the animatic as it lingered a lot and this has reduced the animation by 20 seconds which has helped change a few trimmings for each scene, I'm looking forward to working alongside these people for the project.

He's even created a Spreadsheet to help to structure each scene, which will be included in the submission folder.

Started animating, study task 1

After I got some feed back for the audio and animatic, I started to animate the first scene. It's just Saddam walking up to the podium, I've shown in a previous blog of when he was getting elected as President of Iraq, I just used it as my reference when animating:

Here's the Work in progress:

Im actually proud of how its looking so far and I hope I can finish this scene soon, I'm also considering getting help from people to do the in-betweens, considering that I don't have much time left to do all of it by myself.

Character Design sheets, study task 1

The character designs of my father were pretty simple as my father explained to me how simple his clothing was, all he said was just a t-shirt and some jeans. Alongside his character are expressions practices, I tried to see if the style can be expressed using different emotions, which turned out quite well.

Update 27.04:

These character design sheets have been updated to include the new colour theory previously mentioned

As for Saddam's design, I just looked up references online and just created him based on the style of the animation:

Here are the references I used when making his design:

YCN Breif Art Fund, study task 2

This whole project took about 6 weeks to complete, I met up with an artist from Graphics Design called Kathryn. She had already formulated ideas of what we could do for the Brief we picked which was Art Fund.

From the start, we identify who they were and what we have to demonstrate to solve their problems for the brief. and we documented each process throughout the weeks in a word document.

We were inspired by a simple design layout and animations that used easy to identify shapes to demonstrate what they were conveying which u can see in this animation

This inspired how we wanted to convey our ideas visually and present it using a house style that matched Art Fund's style.

We did research as to what our target audience was, we looked through Art Fund's presence online and discovered that they kept a simple look, which helped determine our outcome of the project.

The house style of the posters made by Kathryn and animation done by myself, fits and suits the look presented by Art Fund's social media.

The animation process took a while as I approached it using a new form of animating, 2.5D taking 2D illustrated images and placing a rig into them so that u can tween their movements. I discovered a few tools that help you in the process of rigging.

I tried to rig the characters I made in DrogonFrame as it was free software but it took a while as I had no idea how to use it properly but would consider learning it in the future as its apparently the same as spine2D but not as advanced.

In the end, I ended up using Animate CC bone tool feature and quickly understood how to use it. This is what the rig looked like, and all u had to do is keyframe and it tweened it for you.

Took a while to get used to how it functions but I enjoyed learning how to operate this tool.

Animating was simple using this new method and took no time to create walk cycles which is the main function of the animation.

Overall I enjoyed taking on this simple style and trying out the method and would like to explore further into using Spine2D or DragonBones in the future.

The animation will be in the folder as it is a big file to upload here along with the art boards that we made to present our project.

Overall I enjoyed talking and collaborating with Kathryn because we managed to finish the project on time and help each other during each phase of the animation and design.

Making the anamatic, study task 1

After editing and finalizing the audio, I used the storyboard I created previously and with some extra scenes as it was needed. The timings worked out well for each scene, I just hope I will be able to animate some scenes.

You can find the animatic in the folder I will be submitting as its a big file to upload on to blogger.
Here are a few screenshots of the new scenes.

Hoping to start animating soon!!

Transcribing the Audio, study task 1

After editing and finalising the audio, I decided to transcribe it. This would not only help me know what is being said in each scene without needing to replay the audio, it will give me a better understanding of what each scene is talking about.

I used a speech to text site to convert my days recording into text, which worked out pretty well, there were some words it didn't capture correctly, which was later fixed.

I asked a friend I know to help me fix the grammar and this whole process helped me grasp exactly what my dad was saying, this is not a film script but I'll use it as one. Creating a full script for this would take a while and with such little time I've decided not to, and stick to this as it already helps identify everything that is happening.

Screenshots of the script, the document will be included in the submission folder:

Creating the audio for the animations, study task 1

Due to the live briefs, I had undertaken I was slightly behind on my main project so I decided to work on editing the interviews I collected in the Easter holidays, it took several days to edit and decide what parts to include from the interview and then compile them to work in accordance with the timeline I had created. Unfortunately, in the process, I managed to gather 3 minutes only from my dad's interview which was not as intended.

This 3 minutes only include two parts of the story I wanted to showcase in the animation which was the history of Iraq and what happened, then the journey from Iraq to England. I thought I was going to also include parts from the other interview but I decided not to as it will ruin the continuity of the story. The audio was captured only from 15 minutes and put into 3 minutes.

You can see all the parts I've included from the lines separating each audio clip.

This whole process was tedious but since I knew how to use Audacity I had only encountered a few problems, such as reducing the volume of some words using fade in and out to keep it flowing, this really helped with the pacing and the timings worked with the storyboard I initially made. I may redo the storyboard a little when I create the animatic.

Dojo Dual Death Course (collab) competition, study task 2

As part of the small briefs, I participated in this competition hosted by Hyuns Dojo.
I spent 5 days animating a stick figure running across the death course, unfortunately, due to time instead of animating my character getting to the end she dies.

This collaboration is over 40 minutes long and my part got included amongst many parts that were not picked.

Throughout the process, I had some problems with the movement as it was hard to animate the character as a female, which was solved by doing it again with curve lines.

I thought the audio would have been easy to do since I had a sound library but getting the right voice for my character prove difficult so I had to search for voices online which took all day.

I'm happy with the result as it shows how much I've improved with movement with different elements such as the tail.

Update:
Recently as a result of Hyun's Dojo reaching the 1mil subscriber count, I took part using my character celebrating.