Scenes for Maya modelling

I am missing the scene for some of my models for maya because they were accidentally deleted them and I can no longer recover the files in maya.

Interm Crit feedback

Over all I am very proud of my animation and its content mainly for how it runs and the detail added makes the piece look a lot more realistic along with the use of reggae music in the background. The colour schemes and background need a little improvement but I think that there is more time needed in order to adjust these mistakes. The feedback alone has been very constructive and the details of what needed changing is clear the main feedback given has stated the main changes that needed to be made but the clear and identify able mistakes made and why they need changing. The issue with my animation has been made obviously easy, I plan to delete the unimportant scenes and keep the needed frames.

My plan now is to delete a few of the unimportant scenes to narrow my animation down to 30 seconds, I will make sure that the text in each scene is aligned and placed into the yellow caption boxes instead of separate captions, because it was said to be really confusing and did not make really make much sense. The text in the beginning needs changing, because there are too many colours used so my objective is to simplify elements my captions and resize my text, the music need to fade because it cut too early and does not follow through properly until the end.          

Text and caption are confusing

    

Considerations

During animating this brief I have made to many vital mistakes with my content and have not focused on paying attention to detail for scenery and characters, I have developed out door scenes with fewer clouds and no coloured sky. Next animation I produce needs more consideration and colour because I fell that the lack of colour in my animation gives it no feeling or emotion and it seems very boring and dull which I feel slightly weakens its presentation and effectiveness. I should ask my self questions of how people will feel when watching this title sequence, will it communicate my message effectively or does it open the movie with with excitement ? 

 

Evaluation

My main aim for this project was to create an animation that depicted some of the scenes the time of the Empire Windrush. I have accomplish my goal of illustrating scenes from the Windrush book, Originally I planned to create an animation that was a slide show of images, which I later on decided to make into a motion comic. Everything works well, but the only problem has been the time frame exceeding the amount needed by 20 seconds or more, the scenes were supposed to be at least five seconds each but some were extended by a second or more mainly for motion used with the animation. The focus was to make sure each scene played continuously without any cutting or freezing, the sources used to help me with my idea has been Youtube, mainly for its content of tutorials and title sequences I visited e.g. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang which feature similar elements which I intended  to use for my animation.

The whole object of making my subtitle has not just been to recreate scenes from the book I have chosen but to place individual details elements into my piece such as music relating to the time and period of the Windrush, considering the era and dress sense, Getting the factual information right, because the book itself retells the history of the boat and the journey of real people aboard a ship. The animation need to have a solid link to the events that took place, especially the journey, what type of people were aboard the boat and why. A subtitle  is not a narrative but they draw links to films so I looked at some of  Saul Bass's work e.g. Anatomy of a murder which draws a link to the movies content through the use of a paper cut out of a dead body as a marked symbolism of murder. My focus was to communicate a different set message based on the content in my book through a set of captions and moving illustrations drawing links between the book and maybe what the documentary would contain.

The main problems faced when making this have been using After Effects the walk cycling of my character, this mainly because I had not had a full understanding of this package at the beginning of the project so there for struggled to find various settings and functions.This alone was not just the problem, I realised when coming to the idea of making my character walk it was going to be a struggle because I am not good with walk cycling and need some practice so I used images of a walk cycle to help me the on the problem is when I wanted to scale my character, the characters features would dissemble into individual parts. I think the main problem with the walk cycle is anticipating my characters movements and what stages of movement go where from beginning to end.

Feedback given along the development of my project has been very constructive and positive. I have been criticised on the links for the scenes to make sure that they have a strong relation to the book its self and what it is about. Along the way I have been asked about my use of content and as to why I have decided to use certain features with in my animated movie. people have said  that the animation works very well though there is the odd feature that could be improved on, like the scene with the use of a few characters playing domino's, someone stated that the scene works well as an animation at this stage of animating anatomy and this should have been applied to the rest of the animation because the style starts to become really simplistic and changes in different scenes. The captions were said to be really confusing mainly for two different type of texts showing up in the same scene and reading differently, I was told that people were not were not clear on which of each text was the titles or the captions.    

If I was to animate these scenes again I would not change their content but would  make sure that I pin point each time frame properly and work to time measurements and try to feature more moveable humanoid character that walk across each scene. Though I was able to reduce the seconds down to 30, still think I need pay attention on this for the future and make sure that I start off with a fewer frames and keep playing back the time frame and replacing scenes if I have to.  

Technique to learn in After effects-Rigging !

This technique is called rigging and it can be found in After Effects, it allows you to create an automatic, moveable and bendable bone structure allowing you to move you characters easily with out having to create separate layers. In the future I hope to use this setting to help me animate my characters in After Effects, Struggle to animate characters with separate layers, during this brief I struggled to make my characters walk and found it difficult to select specific layers because they were named in correctly so I think this would be very useful for animating in the future.

I like its simplicity and method to animating, the settings give you a smoothly edited piece of footage which flows perfectly and allows you to give your character more feeling and flexibility.

Saul Bass

Saul Bass has been a very good example for me to look at mainly for his use of relativeness between his subtitles and film content, he tries to depict the content of the film through the use of slideshow imagery of paper cut out and text. I like how he animates his subtitles because each scene flows nicely and text unexpectedly introduced sometimes any where with in a scene, I like his work for his linking between his illustrations and the film he tries to softly reveal what the film is all about by slotting in symbolic bits of detail in separate scenes for his target audience e.g. a dead cut out figure for the movie "Anatomy of a murder".  

Cast

For the cast my focus was to find actors that were black and would be best suited to play the parts of the character. They would most likely have to have a West Indian background and have an understanding of the Empire Windrush or would have to had played a West indian role in a film, movie , TV show or Documentary. I decided to create a cast because I wanted my animation to feel more realistic as possible and for my target audience to image the following actors in their given roles.

Anthony Mackie

Don Cheadle

Idris Elba

What would be done If I was to re-animate ?

If this brief was to be re-done again I would make sure that I plotted down the scenes that would be used with in my animation numbered and labelled in order. I would make sure each scene was calculated at five seconds  so that I know not to go over my limit. Another problem is the narative I have previousy worked out if I delete some scenes it would reduce my time, the only problem is if I do so the time the animation would no longer have a narrative that makes sense of links to the events of the  windrush correctly. In the future I will make sure I write donw the narative for the order of my scenes and calulate the time frame for each to that how long each scene will take and run and design them accordingly.

The scenes do not all run accordingly to 5 seconds which is the main problem with my animation, If the  scene were all running at 5 seconds and reduced to six and arranged in order, then the animation would be complete.

Research into style of animation - (Bendito Machine)

During my research for silouhete based animations I found this animation which used the elements of silouhettes very well and used it to sell a funny story, I think the sound effects work very well and the pattern and detail gone in to the animation works, Both the patterns and music link to content of the animation because it is focused on a tribe, the sounds are sometimes repetative at times but fit in with the odd narative concept which is revolved around destroying a gigantic robot, the only problem is that the story does not make sense, it feels unorganised because you don't know who the characters are, why and what they are doing and where it is based. The animation makes it clear that they are tribal people throught the use of patterns and designing the characters with staffs and ancient cloathing shaped perfectly to the shap of their bodies.

I chose to look at this animation for how it was organised and the style of using silhouettes, manily because I planned on using the style of silhouettes for my main animation in motion comic form.

Music used

The music used is crossed between two genres reggae and jazz and is called RockSteady by Monty Alexander and Ernest Ranglin. The song I decided to use is called Stalag 17, I personally chose this out of all the rest because it was very soft and smooth and flowed with my animation when a played along side its content.

 stalag 17 made me vision the journey of the boat and people when listening ao I thought that this song along with the boat scenes and mapped journey would work very well. The reason for the selected genres of both Reggae and Jazz becuase Reggae is Genre that represents the carribean and its people and draws that link between the story of the windrush and the type of people that were aboard the ship. Reggae has been an influence to black people over time especially around the Windrush Period where they listened to alot of the classic so I wanted to use music orianted around the carribean and reggae genre to give my target audience the experience of the journey and life style of carribean people through a short sutitle animation.

After effect Walk cycle

This is a video about Key framing a walk cycle in after effects, It talks through the steps of linking layers of a character so that you are able to move each element together as one, I used this for guidance and found it very useful, I used because This video focused on the same subject area with in animation which I planned to use and this was making my characters walk in one individual scene the only problem was that I could not scale my character accordingly after link each body part because they would split in separate directions. I decided that I was wasting time and rethough my idea, watching this again ahas highlighted some of my main mistakes in why I took so long and how I could have saved time doing so. This video talks about moving the legs and and making sure that you don't confuse both sides and making sure you use different colours so that you can identify what side of the character you are moving. I failed to colour cordinate my characters moving parts to help move his body and each individual part was not named correctly which was very confusing and caused me to take long than I should have.

I talks about Contact, recoil, passing and High point Which are steps to working out how the legs work and which points they are positioned. The walk cycle is something I need to work on personally because I am not very good with making my charatcers walk and that is something I would like to work on in the future.

Bouncing ball and turn around

This is both my bouncing ball an turn around which I have practicing with, I am not very good with maya and have found the previous tasks to be quiet difficult but these previous tasks have been fairly simple with helping me understand how to model in maya

Animation and motion comics 2

Another motion comic  based on Watchmen comics and tells the story of events that take place in the superheros lives it does this through out the motion comic the colouring in very effective in representing the characters but their is also very good motion and they also use this motion to change the characters appearance in expression and feelings, and the narration is very soft, clear and understandable because it explains everything straight forward and clearly in relation to the movements of the character even though their mouths do not move makes you think they are actually talking and observing everything.

Animations and motion comics

This is a motion comic from a game called SSX Deadly Decent It features many playable snowboarding characters and tells their stories to how they have become who they are and why, This is Kaori's story, each character has their own motion comic which tells their stories and journeys before entering the main competition to compete as rivals. What I like about this animation is its story telling and smooth animation, it also have very effective and highly detailed colouring which gives you the feel of a situation and specific characteristics which the characters possesses. EA has also thought about the music which gives the animation a sense of feeling and emotion to the characters and scenery.

Chosen Narrator of windrush documentary

Felix Dexter

Lenny Henry

I have mainly decided to change my narrator from felix dexter to Lenny Henry because I feel Lenny has more of a softer and narrative voice to tell the story of the Windrush. He is also very experienced in Playing the role of a west Indian character especially coming from a west Indian back ground.   

Subtitles and timing

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Time frame

My video currently runs at 52 seconds, my target is 30 seconds, the main reason for this is because the scenes created each run slightly over 5 seconds mainly for their content. I aimed to make each scene a motion comic piece with captions and in each one, their is supposed to be at least 5 seconds to fit in both the titles and moving imagery, the problem is due to the animations moving too quick and cutting early if they are reduced in size. The video its self was originally 1 minute and 15 seconds which was too high so I had to reduce it as low as I could but sadly the only limit I could reach was at least 52 seconds which means I am over my main time frame of 30 seconds by 22 seconds alone.

A though that came to mind was to delete a few scenes to narrow the seconds down to 30 but I realised that my title sequence would no longer make any sense which means the content is no longer able to flow as a narrative piece.

I think that it would have been better if I estimated a time frame for each scene around five seconds and worked to that margin. These scenes were worked on as individual files to make their compositions easier to construct and edit. I felt worried at the beginning of creating this animation because I thought That I would produced a limited amount of scenes with very short time frames and would not meet my target, but appears to work perfectly.

If I was to do this again I would anticipate each movement of each element in every scene and make sure I pin point 5 sections in the time frame and make sure I am working to 5 seconds and no more. I need to make sure I keep running it through to check the time frame and to make sure the movement is correct and not to quick.        

      

Comic strip idea

I original intended to create a slide show of moving images that illustrated what the Windrush story was all about about but recently developed the idea to make what I had created into a motion comic which was similar to my original ideas in motion, the only difference is that I am adding comic book captions. I chose to do this mainly for the my love of comics but because I thought it would be good to give my animation a different approach, because you rarely see and title sequence using comic components.



  

Problems with scene and change

Old character design

One of my main objectives was to create a scene that illustrated the arrival of the passengers from the caribbean, I wanted to depict a similar image when they arrived. I came up with a walk cycle that worked, I refereed to the walk cycle for animation on the internet and worked according to that but I struggled to fit both the walking of the character and the character into the scene because he would either walk too fast or  would not look like he was walking on air because his feet were not fully fixed to the floor which made things really difficult for me. Anticipating the movement was not working out so I decided to create a similar scene where the passengers looked more like a crowed looking onto England and its signs. I felt this scene would be a lot easier due to the lack of anticipation which mean't all I had to do was to move the silhouettes accordingly.    

Old scenery

Newly developed replacement