Applied animation week 16 (final week)

With only three day left I quickly moved on to editting my dads voice as it was important for the animation, I basically went through both audio clips selecting which was the best version of each sentence and placed it in the time line, I did this with Rey so that I had a second opinion on what sounds better. After selecting the best sentences I placed it all together and changed the pitch and speed to make it lower voice for pitch and then sped it up with speed to get it close to his original voice. the purpose for this is so that I can speed up the audio as it was 2 minutes and 49 seconds long which does not fit our timings for our animation which is a lesson for the future, to make sure that I record the voice with the anamatic open for the voice actor. After speeding it up and taking gaps out of the audio I was left with a 1 minute and 55 second audio clip which I passed on to Grace as she was compositing everything together.

All of this was done on audacity and did not take to long to do, allowing me to continue with animating the closing book scene which surprising didnt take to long as all I had to do is draw the page falling down and fitting to the reverse opening sequence of the book which I did struggle with at first as I had no idea which frame I had to combine my page falling to. so I set up a few ruler lines to guide me which was all lined up with the reverse book opening:

After that was done which did take a bit of tie since I had to match it up correctly so it would transition properly, this is what it looked like.

I also forgot to mention that I added the name of the book for both sequences.

All that was left to do for animating was the leaves flying ou of the page and then falling which I decided to do on after effects as I wanted to use the assets that grace made of the leaf, this was a difficult task as I had to constantly duplicate the leaves, key frame it and pre compose them in after effects, heres the process,

After completing this sequence I sent it off to Grace so that she can add the sequences in the animation, little did I know that when I saw the animation so far I found a few mistakes that I informed Grace about and that she said she would fix when she has everything done, I did help them with how each scene should look like and how it should transition, and I'm happy that we have finished this animation on time.

I loved the music choice and sound effects Grace added to the animation helping with the flow of my Fathers narrator voice in the process. 

Here is the final animation:

this is the compressed version, the HD file is too big so I will place the video in the submission folder.

To finish this project of Grace and Rey took the roles of making the DVD screener and Preskit, I helped both of them with deciding what images we should use and how we should present it, and here is the examples of the final thing:

(this also was the cover for the dvd pack)

And this ends our project, it was a fun project but many problems occoured for myself and the team because of time management, hopefully this animation is good enough to submit to festivals but after we clean up a few mistakes here and there.

Applied animation week 15

I started this week off with the keyframe animation for the book scenes, where I first did a test of what I think or how I think the book should look like and how it will open. I informed my teammates to continue with creating the assets and backgrounds so that they are ready to be animated by all of us.

Here is the test I conducted which I found very easy to do:

I made a few mistakes here and there in terms of resolution but that was all quickly sorted once I realised I was working on the wrong canvas size.

On the program, I was using called Clip Studio Paint, they have a perspective ruler, and this is how I was able to make sure that the book opened correctly, here's a screen shoot to demonstrate the ruler in action as it not only helped with the process of making the book but it helped me creating the background;

So I moved on to creating the line art of the draft animation with the background lines which I then gave to Rey to do the in-betweens and here is the example:

no in-betweens

with in-betweens

Rey mentioned to me that it was a little difficult at first to in-between the lines I created but he managed to do a great job!

from this, I moved on to placing the base colours with shading and highlights and here is how the first frame looked like with this new colouring technique I adopted over experimentation with some previous illustrations I made:

I continued colouring like this throughout the sequence and I'm so proud that I managed to complete my first colour animation of the year and here is the final version of the book opening:

Since this was all keyframed I had a bit of difficulty with the transitioning to white but I managed to do it using a dark purple gradient as you can see in the final example above, all that's left to do is make the leaves flying off the paper and falling down and then create the closing book sequence which I hope to do next week. I also have to edit my father's voice as I've recorded him twice with different voices, I plan to get it all done by next week hopefully before the deadline and also help the team out with anything that's left to do.

Applied animation week 14

Yet again due to handling modules for submission has pushed me far behind schedule and has ruined the time schedule I was to follow, although after finishing and submitting all of the other modules I had some time to make a plan of action with my teammates as to what I need to do and what they should consider finishing, and with that I managed to record my Fathers voice whilst also correcting all my grammar in the script, as my dad found it difficult to say parts of the narrator's script, here's the final version of the script:

My plan for the next 2 weeks is to finish the animations I have to do which involves the book scenes that I've already mentioned, whilst helping my teammates with some of the scenes and backgrounds we have to create. I hope we can finish the animation in time for submission. 

Applied animation week 11

Due to some work I had to do through easter, I only managed to work on refining the script a little with my dad and hopefully it will be done soon. and hopefully, I can start on animating my parts of the animation which includes the book scenes and a bit of the keyframing of the merchants shaking hands. not doing any of this work for two weeks has put me slightly behind but I hope to catch up soon.

Applied animation week 8

Starting this week off straight into the script writing as I had some idea of how I want the story to be played out, but throughout this week one of the Tutors noticed something wrong with my script. I've been writing it wrong this whole time. I never knew there was a way of creating scripts and was directed to look into script writing. Throughout learning how to write a script from various websites that all pretty much had the same concept, I wanted to see how a script gets visualised, so I tested it by Reading a script and watching a scene from Cars 2. It's astounding how the script fits so well with the animation, here's the script and video:

http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Cars-2.html



After doing this I was inspired to create the script ready for next week as a final draft that Grace can develop storyboards,

Here is the First draft which I still think needs refining:

As you can see above this is my first attempt making a proper script which is used for industry, I instantly understood the techniques required to make the script and had something we can base the storyboard on. Whilst Grace was making the storyboard I helped Rey with deciding what character to look for and design, we also thought about the process we were going to use to animate, which Grace suggested to us that we should create assets as it would be easier and quicker to animate.

Last week I mentioned that we would possibly have a narrator, which I asked Rey to voice. So we recorded some of the narrator's lines using different voices that Rey could make, here are a couple of examples Rey voiced:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BxIyDr0S-ishamxMUDNaV0ZWSVE?usp=sharing

I showed these examples of Rey's voice to one of the tutors and they said that it would not work as it does not suit the theme of what we are going for and they suggested that either one of our parents should do it.

towards the end of the week, Grace had finished the story board:

hopefully, I will edit/refine the script over the holiday so that I can record the audio with my dad.

Applied animation week 7

This week we prepared our presentation together on google slides showcasing everything we have done and what we have found from our research, and what we are going to do for our Animated documentary through our Gantt chart as to who is doing what and where we should be. The presentation was mostly research and sketches of character designs, mood boards and draft storyboards, with what we had Grace made an animatic of what we are hoping to get done. which unfortunately had a few black screens as we did not have any idea or drawing to represent what we wanted.

We got asked many questions such as "how are you going to fill the gaps?" or "Do you think you will finish the animatic soon so that we can start on the production?" and so these are questions we must reflect and prepare and action plan for whilst also following the Gantt chart schedule we have made.

Here are the draft storyboards I did last week which is not final and still unfinished but it was just to help me visualise what I want to create for the animation:

After the crit session, I did some more research into how silk is actually made nowadays and I found this video with Grace:



From this, I wanted to include the process of making silk in the story somehow. I discussed with Grace as to what we could do to add this process in and so we decided to show the Silk Goddess collecting the cocoons and turning it into threads.

On the topic if thinking about the story we thought about a book opening in a library with one of the paper flying out turning into leaves and the leaves fall into the pond where the Silk goddess picks it up. I also talked with Rey about the Narrators voice for the animation and he seems like he would be a good choice if we were to add narration which is going to be likely.

hopefully, by next week I will have started a script based on the new ideas we discussed.

Applied animation week 6

This week I decided that we should all decide the final subject as to what we want to create an animated documentary on since we had a few options, which are The journey of Marco Polo, the History of the Silk Road or the history of Silk. The end result between us was the History of silk because we think we could cover a little of Silk Road and Marco polo's history so I started with drafting a small script. Here is what I've written:

Silk

Establishing shoot inside a library looking towards a book under the name of “silk”, the book then opens, the pages combine and become silk, the question is asked about the discovery of silk and where it came from, the narrator is introduced and says “Where does silk come from, I hear you ask? Well I’m glad you asked, let’s go back to where it all started” as the event (voice over) is happening we are following the silk falling and turning into leaves and as this happens the scenery changes to the silk goddesses home. The camera then follows one of the leaf’s falling down and gently lands into the silk goddess pond, the narrator then starts to explain the history of silk,

“We now enter a time where silk was discovered by the silk goddess named Leizu who loved her garden and is where she first discovered these silk worms. These silkworms would leave there cocoons on the leaves and she would obtain them and begin the process of taking the silk.”

As described above we zoom out from the pond into an establishing shot of the silk goddess back garden, where we find Leizu walking towards the trees. The camera then changes to one of the silk worm's point of view looking above towards Leizu coming in from the right, this then changes to behind shoot looking down from Leizu perspective collecting the cocoons. Which then transitions to the cocoons being held and being woven.

“This process of silk being used to make clothes was hidden from the world for 2000yrs and was then found from travellers that visited China. Trading started to begin only between royal families as silk was very valuable.”

The scene progresses with travellers coming to china, establishing shot of the outside gate.

Even though this is what I have written so far we have more ideas as to how we can include Marco Polo simply by showing him traveling across a silk road map such as this:

Grace had a brilliant idea of making it seem like a timeslapse of him walking across different backgrounds, like in lion king:

From this I also remebered the Short music video called White horses that shows a main protagonist running across backgrounds and interacting with various elements which I hope we can create when I get the script done but, it's very vague as to what I want to create.

Here's the link to the White horses music video:

Grace developed some quick concepts throughout the week and here are examples she presented:

Rey did some character designing of Animals and people which hopefully develops into final designs. and we now have to prepare for next weeks presentation and show what we have so far.

Applied animation week 5

This week I did more research into the Silk Road and the origins and discovered that Silk was hidden from the world for 2000 years in china, and it first came about when a lady called Leizu who is known as the Silk Goddess who discovered Silk worms in her garden and helped with the creation of silk clothes.

I pretty much just discussed what I had found out about silk and how people later found out about it through The royal Chinese family marrying off their princess to other royal families in other countries and that travellers would visit and find out about Silk through the markets.

Alongside the research, I have found I looked into what other material or items were sold along the silk road just out of curiosity, and I came across  http://www.advantour.com/silkroad/goods.htm

This website not only showcases what goods were sold along the silk road but how it travelled across Asia to Europe, and how people started to benefit from trading on the Silk Road. here are a few goods that were traded along the Silk road.

"Rome received spices, fragrances, jewels, ivory, and sugar and sent European pictures and luxury goods. Eastern Europe imported rice, cotton, woollen and silk fabrics from Central Asia and exported considerable volumes of skins, furs, fur animals, bark for skin processing, cattle and slaves to Khoresm."  

many fancy words and here is a quick list of basic items or rather the most traded goods amongst the Silk Road:

Art

Horses

Wine

Vegetables and fruit

Home furniture

Weapons

Ore's (eg iron, metal)

Medicines

Tea and Rice

Clothes

Animals

slavery

And the list goes on and on.

I will attempt to draw concepts of Leizu because I'd like to contribute to a few character designs with Grace and Rey, but it seems like I'm falling into the Director role for this project because they are developing the character designs.

Applied animation week 4

This week I listened to the silk road podcast and found it very informative and specific as the people who were talking about the silk roads development from it's beginning were all experts in the field as historians. They touched upon Marco polo and his involvement of trading in his time, they also discussed some battles that occurred such as the "Battle of talas" in 751AD where the Arabs and Chinese fought resulting in the Arabs (mostly Muslims) winning the combat and taking over the silk road which I found very interesting as I'm a fellow Muslim, so I researched about Islam Silk Road and found many articles that talk about the influence that Islam had over on the Silk Road Providing many benefits to everyone. Here's a link to the podcast http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p315t

Here's a book that I found called "The new Silk Road":

 

This seems like it would be a good read and I would like to find out more about what Islam has brought to the Silk Road. I've talked to the team and it seems like we are going to do some new research into the Silk Road and it's different events, Grace found some information such as where it all started with a Silk Goddess and both Rey and Grace are developing character concepts which I look forward to seeing next week. I hope to find as much information as possible and it is now clear what we want to develop for our animated documentary. 

Applied animation week 3

We started this week off by researching a bit more into Marco Polo's history as he was really important in helping the developing the silk road, reaching many areas and that he was under Kublai Khan who was the fifth Khagan of the Mongol Empire, both of which were living in the 13th century. The reason behind why Marco was one of the top people was because of his amazing trading skills and linguist skills as he mastered 4 languages and helped Kublai or rather served him for many years.

Kublai Khan (1260-1294)

Marco Polo (1254-1324)

There's a lot more research to be done if we are going to make an animated documentary about Marco polo's journey throughout the silk road, in first person view.

One of our tutors asked us about our development of the project, which I explained to him along with Rey and Grace. From the explanation, he mentioned that we were being a bit broad with the idea and that we could not fit his journey within 2 minutes, therefore we had to think a bit more about the subject we really want to create a documentary on, but the research we have done so far has not been all wasted and I'm sure it will be useful in the upcoming weeks. 

We also were suggested to listen to a podcast about the Silk Road and find out any information that could potentially help us, which I will hopefully listen to and discuss next week with the team.

Applied animation week 2

We started this week off by looking at our mood boards we made last week, and we also decided to think about Marco Polo since we are looking to make the documentary about him in first person view. and explore his background as to why he was so important and what his role was on the silk road.

On this mood board, I created last week we can see the different colours throughout the path, from china all the way to Europe. the landscapes change from desert to grass entering Europe which is a nice contrast to play with in terms of mixing the colours to match.

We also discussed that we are going to concentrate on creating the animated documentary about Marco polo in first person influenced by Pear cider and cigarets, as I've never created a first persons view animation, and would be cool if we could actually pull it off. but seems unlikely since it took 5 and a half years to create Pear cider and cigarets, but we will consider the chances in the future.

hopefully, by next week we will decide what it is we want to do for this animation as we are still developing and we are confused on what we want to look into.

applied animation week 1

We started this groups collaboration thinking and generating ideas as to what we want to work on as a topic, my team includes Grace and Rey. The topic we choose was History as we all wanted to create a documentary based on a subject we like, In the process of thinking of a subject to research we were shown a Interesting documentary that might of inspired our thinking as to what we want to animate by the end of it, called "Pear Cider and Cigarettes" the animated short follows a man on a journey to find his friend "Techno" in China and bring him back to his homeland, the only issue is that Techno is a drug addict and has caused many problems to himself and others around him which ends with him dying, this was briefly shown at the beginning when the main character receives a will from Techno. The film is brilliant because of its use of 2d first person animation which I definitely got inspired by when forming ideas with the others in the group as they were also inspired from the short.

I did a bit of research and found an article that interviews the animator of the development of this short film. He discusses what it was like to develop this film over 5 and a half years. and what he thought about in the process.

It's quite an interesting read and it's nice to see how he illustrates what he has seen and gone through in the journey of trying to save Techno. Here's a link to the interview about what the director thought about

https://vimeo.com/blog/post/graphic-novel-turns-animation-pear-cider-cigarette


We started thinking about what we wanted to work on or rather research for history, and based it on ideas that both Grace and Rey were thinking about which involved trading and war, from that we made an idea board:

from this, we then picked one of the ideas we wanted to base our project on and we all agreed on the subject of Silk road, I didn't really know much about Silk road but that does not matter as I will be researching and finding out what it is and what I will be able to discover.

And so we continued meeting up throughout the week to discuss about Silk road and what it is essential, from our research I found out that it is a path that traders would follow around the world to provide trade and earn a living out of, but with further research I found out that there were some famous traders such as Marco Polo. Which I will probably research more into since he was important for the development of silk road.

We then started creating mood boards, Silk road had a very long path that went across the whole planet, with that in mind I found a map showcasing the path and added pictures of the different landscapes of the different locations as you can see in the picture below:

The different colours surrounding the path seems interesting and will probably help when developing a colour palette in the upcoming weeks.

We were suggested to watch Lord of War which is an about trade featuring Nicolas Cage as the main protagonist, the story introduces itself through the process of how a bullet is constructed from its point of view and ends with a composition of bullets on the floor around Nicolas, with that the story
begins explaining how Nicolas got to that moment of time. I enjoyed watching how the trade system works behind the scenes, the different techniques that people undertake to get their business successful, in this case, the gun industry all to obtain money and cause trouble around the world! there is a lot that goes on and is just considered a way to earn an income to live your life, but the sad reality is that people come to the realisation that this is not how people should live their life as we witness throughout the film.

Like I mentioned above, the film was delivered in a way that took my interest to the subject of trade and the methods of trade used to obtain (mostly) income, I'd like to showcase this within in the animation if possible and should be discussed when generating ideas. when we meet up next week.