End of project, study task 1

I've explained mostly how Extended practice was like in my evaluation, this was a really difficult year but I've really learned a lot and have enjoyed the process. I wish I could have finished my final animation but it was a task that will be handled after submission with my team as its an important story I want to tell through my animation.

The film file is quite big, so it will be in the submission folder and this ends my final blog of Extended practice

Problems with my team, study task 1

Due to problems occurring such as hardware issues, or had issues because of travelling and prioritizing their work, caused my team to not contribute much to the animation throughout the process, leading to not having any inbetweens done for the animation. One of them was going to do the hands animation, but because of struggles with their course, they didn't have time to help.

because of this, I've had to limit my animation to keyframes and create an animation that is limited and is shown at the end of my animation. It may seem like I have created around roughly 50+ seconds, they don't really show my capability as an animator. In the end, my time management was not so great as I kept on being delayed due to not establishing a team at an earlier stage of my project.

Artbook, study task 1

I created the artbook to be quite simple and follow the colour theory I created in for the animation, I'm happy with the turnout and I'm looking forward to making more artbooks in the future using InDesign as it was an easy program to use to create books such as mine.

The Artbook will be in the submission folder.

New versions of my storyboard, study task 1

this newly revised version now includes a colour script which was to reflect on the colour theory I created, and I'm thrilled at how it turned out as it expresses the different emotions using colour.

Enviroments, study task 1

The environments presented in the animation were made using reference.

For the Baghdad airport, I tried to include something that represents Iraq, and I came across these photos.

I included the tower seen in the first photo into this background I created:

It may not be noticeable in the animation but it does have an essence of Iraq.

I also applied the same process to make Heathrow airport:

Unlike Baghdad's Airport, it feels different in terms of architecture. has a square-ish feel as if it was part of the modern design in the 1980's

update, 08.05: 

I asked my father to help me make a plan of the family store he worked in, and so he reconstructed the front of the shop and a bird's eye view, which gave me a better understanding of how I could reconstruct it, this is the drawing;

This is the final digital result, I decreased the opacity of the colour, this is so that its less distracting when I include the animation on top of the background layer.

Progression on the animation, study task 1

After the crit session, I quickly decided on doing the easy parts of the animation, which were the scenes after my father's scene (losing his brothers). I just created each object such as the passport, visa and tickets and animated them in after effects.

Throughout the process, I learned that you could import the comps you make in AfterEffects into Premier. There's also the live edit feature, whenever I update the object it will update in AfterEffects then into Premier which really sped up the process.

here are some screenshots of some of the scenes.

The process of creating these scenes was quickly handled, thanks to live edit, I'm hoping that I will have something to show before submission

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.

character design experimentation, study task 1

I started experimenting creating a style based on the 3 films I previously mentioned, The Breadwinner, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir.

each style has something unique that I wanted to adopt alongside my own style which you can see in the image below:

I figured out the kind of style I wanted to use for this project and will be making the full character design sheets based on what I've done hopefully having continuity on other characters such as Saddam. 

Moodboards/referances and colours, study task 1

I started doing research into pictures of Iraq taken in the 1980's and found various pictures spamming from historical events to beautiful landscapes that were probably destroyed because of the war. I just could not believe that the Iraq that I know this day and age and have visited looked beautiful before I was born.

I then did some research into the different films I've watched as a way to help me figure out the style approach for my animation.

These are from the following films, The Breadwinner, Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir which I mentioned previously, I want to use these as my inspiration for my animation as they all express an element that I would love to include.

Also, there is a nice contrast of colouring between each film, which may help when I decide the colours which I will use.

I also created these colour boards based on the landscapes of Iraq:

I hope to find a way to include these colours in my animation.

2nd interview recorded and uncle unrecorded conversatoin, study task 1

This week I interviewed my Father on his experience and also gathered a lot of information from him, and like last time I time stamped all the parts of the recording, I would like to use, though I have a feeling I won't be able to use both interviews in the final animation.

A lot of notes were taken because there were so many moments that could be used.

I may end up just with my Fathers interview as it's very powerful, though I will edit the audio to 3 minutes to see if it's possible to fit everything.

As for the information told to me about the history of Iraq foretold by my uncle, he mentioned that during education many events happened, one of which is trying to leave the country to study in the UK.

Getting to the UK was difficult but he managed, though he wasn't free from the Iraqi government, as they would send agents acting as students to spy on people like my uncle. He also mentioned that there were moments the agents were going to take him back, luckily they didn't need to get involved with him.

I could go on to mentioning all sorts of situations he explained to me, but I just wanted to give a quick highlight of an example he told me 

Got my first Interview, study task 1

I invited Zainab, a producer also making a film focused about her Father's life in Iraq. The interview lasted an hour, and there was more than enough material for me to use for the animation.

I listened to the whole recording and time stamped bits I'd like to use. Heres the list:

 

There's a lot of material to use, which is helping me shape how I should change the storyboard of my animation to fit her story into it.