Sting Production - Group Reflection

When we were introduced to this brief I was looking forward to the prospect of working in a team on a chosen sting as I liked the look of a lot of the animatics that were created by the class. The production took off to a good start as we exchanged contact information and initial design ideas for a background which was our starting point. I realised early on that my team mate was very talented in the designing process and I therefore felt a little nervous that my work and contributions would not be up to his standard. However, this appeared to be overlooked as he kept copies of my work and gave me tasks to do.

We agreed near the start of the project that he would deal with animating the main character in the sting and I would create the minor characters as I felt the animating process wasn't particularly my strongest area and I obviously didn't want that to affect the final outcome. I found animating the birds quite a challenge as wing cycles can be quite complex but my team mate seemed happy with the work. I enjoyed designing and animating the squirrel which I chose to do on my own as the original inspirational video featured a simple grey squirrel which really added to the 'calm' effect that my team mate wanted at the start of his sting. He was also happy with the squirrel so things seemed to be going well. I was then asked to colour and export the Photoshop files in preparation for importation into After Effects. From this point I felt like communication broke down a little as he was not clear in the stage he was up to and didn't seem to assign me anything else to do.

My team mate kept asking me over a couple of weeks to keep adding to the short animations I created to develop them which I did and then sent to him. It seemed in my eyes he had become very protective over his work as he wasn't showing me the stage he was up to and I was a little confused as to what he wanted me to do next. I kept consistent email communication with my team mate asking for some clarity in what I should be doing but he seemed to want to do it all himself. I really just wanted him to keep me in the loop and assign me tasks even if he wasn't going to use them in the final sting.

I was eventually asked to collect sound which I was happy with doing as I quite enjoyed collecting sound for my own sting idea. The following week after been set this individual job I asked him what else he wanted me to do and he just said keep collecting more sound which I didn't object to and therefore overlayed some new sounds over the original animatic. This is when I glanced at his screen and saw that the composition had changed quite a lot from the original animatic and that my work didn't appear to be in the After Effects project. I spoke to my tutor about this as I felt that communication had deteriorated and that it had become a project he was just doing alone. He then informed me that he had changed some of my work and didn't tell me because he didn't want to offend me. As a director I want him to tell me what to do and I will not be offended by changes or constructive criticism.

I found out in this last week that he has been telling people in the class that I have not been doing much work for this project and I could not help but get upset by this as that kind of judgement should be discussed with me and not told to peers outside of the group as it has nothing to do with them at all. I have not felt that I have done as much work as I wanted to but this is down to the fact my team mate did not take on the role of director effectively and consequently left me with little to no work to be done. However, I put my full commitment into the work I have done and feel I have made progress.

I learnt from this project that I like assisting in the production of other people's work, communication is vital in a production team and that in future I would prefer to work on my own.

Sting Production - Colouring & Cleaning Up

After working into the rough animations I then coloured each frame in Photoshop in preparation for the frames to be imported into After Effects which will be used for the final sting.

By importing each individual frame into Photoshop I was able to go over the line-work and ensure the drawing style was consistent. I coloured the creatures as based on the Tex Avery source material.

Examples of the coloured birds which fly at the beginning of the animation.

Inspiration

Examples of the blue birds which fly in the opposite direction at the start of the sting.

Inspiration

Examples of the squirrel's coloured frames as he runs down the tree at the start of the animation.

Inspiration

 

 I imported the coloured frames of the squirrel into Flipbook and this shows the final outcome which I'm really happy with. The birds sadly came out in grayscale as they did not support the alpha channel setting.


I decided to change the ducks animation as the right duck flying was proving difficult to animate. I have made both ducks fly in synchronisation with the further duck been smaller in proportion so they are not completely identical.

To contrast nicely against the vibrant background I made the ducks a plain white colour.

My team mate seemed happy with the progress and asked me to save each frame as a Photoshop file with a transparent background so that when they are imported into After Effects it is just the creature that is visible.

 Once all the backgrounds were made transparent I sent them to my team mate who began to import them into the final After Effects file.

Sting Production - Animation Stages

After discussion with my team member we decided that he would concentrate on the animation of the main character in the animatic and I would take on the more smaller roles of the characters such as the birds flying at the beginning.

I began by doing some rough poses and sketches in Photoshop to familiarize myself with the characters.

I used this reference image in order to practice the bird wing cycles.

Initial rough poses/sketches of the smaller birds flying at the beginning of the animation.

Flying ducks key pose practice.

From creating these rough sketches I realised there were some alignment issues with the flying ducks (including the right duck's feet) and that the wings needed a lot of work in the smaller birds, from here I then began to try out the key poses in Flipbook.

Sting Production - Early Stages

I am now in a group to begin producing the final 20 second sting for this project. The animatic I am working on is great and I am very pleased it is the Warner Brothers genre as I am particularly comfortable with this style of animation.

To begin my work in the group I first looked at the video my team member gained his first inspiration from which is Tex Avery's Screwball Squirrel from 1944. I looked at a series of images in order to observe the style and drawing techniques used by the wonderful animator Tex Avery.

Looking at character design - the animatic uses a very similiar character to the grey squirrel pictured here.

Character Pose

My team member said he based his animatic on this animated short with the idea of events been calm near the beginning and hectic towards the end.

I particularly looked at the landscape and tree designs in Tex Avery's short to try and mimic his unique style.

Based on my research into this animated short, I went on to create a background design in Photoshop based on one of the stills from my team member's animatic with the end result been this:

I sent this to my team member who had a look at it and we decided to use his background design instead as it featured better textures and he wanted a wider shot in the final design.

My Sting - Storyboard Design

This is my storyboard design for my sting centered on the friendship of Timmy the typical alley cat and Tubs the paint tub.

I gained inspiration for this drawing style from the Hanna Barbera 'Top Cat' cartoons.

This was originally a hand-drawn storyboard with the line work cleaned up in Photoshop.

Character Design - Charlie The Cat

A 5 pose turnaround of the character Charlie the Cat, created in Photoshop.

A collection of Charlie's facial expressions, created in Photoshop.

How Charlie is constructed...

Landscape Design

Original landscape idea:

Developed final landscape idea: