The Bond of Four - After the Deadline

   I have already set myself a deadline for after today's deadline, which will be the Exhibition itself starting on the 13th of June (But chances are that we will have to hand in our works and set up everything much earlier than that). 

   And here' s a to-do list:

1. Finish the animation itself:
   - Sketch out the last few scenes
   - Clean up animation sketches (All timing should then be properly established for Luke to work with)
   - Colour (Which can be done while Luke starts working on the soundtrack again)
2. Finish painting last few backgrounds (Only about 1 to 2 left)
3. Do up a couple more polished looking character sheets and concept art
4. Update art book before getting it printed
5. Have Luke update the soundtrack

   Those are the mandatory steps that I should take after this deadline while also moving onto PPP3 and its deadline.

The Bond of Four - Working with Luke

   Luke Tingle, from the very first time I decided to work with him, has always been an incredibly composed and dependable individual, and so it was only right when I decided to go back to him for my music and sound needs for this project. After presenting my animatic to the class during that one critique session more than a month back, I thought Luke would have been to commence putting together a proper soundtrack from what I had given him. Before then, I had shared with him a few examples on what sort of music I wanted, while also giving him the time to gather together the sound effects that I would like to include in the animation.

   It was about a month later and 2 to 3 weeks before this deadline that I started worrying if a little. When speaking to one another through Facebook on one another's progress, Luke said that he could only truly start composing a proper soundtrack for the animation only after it was fully completed. While confounded and beginning to panic a little by that point (Seeing as Cara was able to get a soundtrack composed for her by simply providing an animatic to her own composer), I started discussing the matter further with Luke on what could be done, seeing as there was no way that I was going to completely finish this animation for this module's submission. Luke was thankfully as patient and assuring as always, and eventually, we agreed that a percussive of sorts would work better for this submission, a full proper soundtrack would be developed after the deadline when I continue finishing up this animation for June.

   And so for the time being, throwing whatever new scenes (Be they completely or just somewhat better looking than those posted doodles) I have into the animatic, I then handed it over to Luke through the shared Dropbox folder for him to put together the percussive. I am sure that I will at least still have an original soundtrack for this submission and will be able to replace the placeholder music that I have been using this entire time. But if not, I at least still have a backup (That being the placeholder music).

The Bond of Four - Palace Background

   I had to put together a moodboard before I started designing this background, while I loved the colour scheme (Being mainly green) from the original illustration, I actually realised that my drawing looked absolutely NOTHING like a garden palace if a palace at all (It looked a lot more like a village in fact), and so extra research had to be done before I started. It was obviously meant to look brighter than the other palace design (Not because it takes place outdoors), and is meant to look more cheerful and colourful-- though, this is all pretty messy considering this scene actually takes place before that one... oh well.

   There were so many times when I nearly ended up putting in too much red (Since most of the references had that sort of colour scheme, it also doesn't help that one of my other backgrounds already had a dark red colour scheme to it...), so this background proved to be a huge challenge to paint and took a lot more time when compared to my other background designs... in fact, it's still not quite finished.In an attempt to make it a tiny bit more detail, I did a tiny bit of photo manipulating and placed it into the background itself, instead of wasting too much time painting that part.

   I am definitely going to go back to polishing this further after the deadline, no way is this the finished version (As you can see from the horrific scribbles at the very back), but for now it will work as a placeholder background for that scene.

The Bond of Four - The Art Book

   I deleted quite a few pages and removed a few sketches when going back to finishing up this art book for my submission, just so that the layout would look neater and more constant throughout. And seeing as there is not much you can get from the animation in terms of its story, it was only right to contextualise the characters more thoroughly in the book itself. I also didn't include all the new storyboards that I did in there and was a little more selective when it came to that (I didn't get the time to storyboard the fight scenes anyway, but I did after all animate those scenes directly into the animatic itself instead of storyboarding them like I did the other scenes, so it's probably a little redundant when you think about it).

   Much like the art book I did for COP3, the layout is actually really simple and clean with me focusing more the placement of the images and the text itself, I didn't necessarily place in other design elements since there was already so much to see when it came to all the concept art and storyboards, it was just going to look incredibly busy if I did. Though, I might consider adding a few tiny things (Perhaps a little background for the notes) after this deadline before I send this book out for printing.

   There are still quite a few more sketches I did, but they honestly didn't fit into the art book. And it obviously isn't wise to squeeze every single thing in there, and so I placed them into a separate folder instead for submission.

The Boy and the Beast

   The Boy and the Beast is Mamoru Hosoda's latest film (I have previously written about Wolf Children in a past module) that was released on July 11th 2015. The subbed and dubbed versions were however released around early March, which finally gave me the opportunity to watch it after our previous submission for research and development. Having purchased the art book and storyboard book sometime last year, it has since been one of my main influences and inspirations for this project when it comes to its characters designs, animation quality, background designs, and even storyboards.

   An action adventure fantasy (Like his past films), the story follows Ren who has recently lost his mother. Not knowing the whereabouts of his father and not wanting to live with his legal guardians, the nine year old flees into the streets of Shibuya, resenting life and everything else that came with it. Moving onto the more interesting bit, the Lord of the magical Beast Kingdom has decided that he will return in order to reincarnate as a deity and names two potential successors, with one of them being one of the main protagonists of this film, Kumatetsu, the powerful but unfortunately lone and lazy bear-like beast. Ren and Kumatetsu eventually cross paths one another, and while they are off to an incredibly rocky start, begin a very close master and disciple relationship as the story progresses...

   It is interesting to note that the characters of Mamoru Hosoda's films are always flatly colours WITHOUT a single layer of shading (With a few very rare exceptions) regardless of how dark or brightly lit their surroundings happen to be (Which should result in some very drastic shading or lighting depending on what sort of setting it is). Again, this most probably results in numerous colour palettes created for a bulk of the film's cast, especially for Ren and Kumatetsu. 

   This still keeps the task of colouring simpler when one thinks about it, because even if shading was to be added to these characters, surely their entire colour palette needs to still be changed, when they are placed in a setting with dramatically different lighting. But in all, I do indeed find this style of plain colour to be appealing, I just find it amazing how it can be effectively done especially one needs to carefully consider what colour palettes should be used, no matter how subtle the differences are.

   To further add to this, the film's beautifully painted backgrounds are somehow able to go so well with the flatly coloured characters, neither stands out too much with one another and somehow blends so naturally with one another (But then again many animated works from both the west and east have proven that more detailed backgrounds can indeed go well with characters that are designed and coloured in a far simpler style, it could also be said that the animation style might have a part to play in this as well).

   It has always been a challenge effectively blending CGI and traditional 2D animation (And quite frankly, there aren't too many examples-- or have I yet to find that many that are able to do so). While it definitely is much easier to use CGI, especially for crowd scenes. This film really does try its absolute best to make it work, by blurring the backgrounds and its characters, you unfortunately can still make out the unnaturally fluid movements of the CGI characters in the back. Still, it isn't necessarily as awful as some other examples and doesn't deter too much from the overall beauty of this film (The pros most definitely outweigh the cons). So long as they aren't just lazily throwing CGI in there without even attempting to blend it in properly (It kinda worked for the Animatrix, but not here, no). 

   There is a lot and I mean A LOT of fighting that actually takes place in this animation, but what I found absolutely interesting about that is the fact that it feels and looks really different to the usual dynamic, over-the-top fighting you see in other japanese animations. And no, this isn't even about the quality and intricacy of the animation (Obviously since japanese anime films will of course have a higher animation budget than most television series) itself... I still can't quite put my finger on it but I suppose it is the slightly more realistic look it is given in comparison, even during the crazier fight scenes. This might be a bit of a criticism however, that I feel like the fight scenes still lack the impacts seen in so many other animations? It is clean, detailed and pretty realistic (Much like Satoshi Kon's own works), but there is something lacking, even during what should be the most brutal of fights... eh, who knows, I should probably rewatch it again someday to see if I actually missed out on something.

The Bond of Four - Final Presentation

   Based on the feedback I received, my peers were mainly impressed by the concept art itself, such as the character and background designs and the colours that were used. There weren't too many changes to my animatic since the last time I showed it to them (Save for the opening scene, which I still hope to clean up some more before submission), and so I understand that the animation itself didn't necessarily stand out to them as much as the visuals did (Seeing that it was mainly just messy animation sketches).  Though some compliments were given to the hair animation for one of my characters, which I of course was still not satisfied with. I am glad that some of them took notice of the wind/breeze movements in what would have otherwise been still shots in the beginning, because that definitely took way more time than it needed to (I still need to finish colouring in that one scene in fact).

   I received quite a bit of helpful feedback from my lecturers about more properly considering the layout for the pages of my art book. And if there is one thing that I should have close to finished by this deadline, it is the art book itself. While I did in fact use InDesign while putting it together, I can understand that I need to make the layout more consistent to each page instead of simply throwing them within the margins and columns (I did however based my messy layout on the Soul Calibur art book I happen to have on me, though I will be referring to other books with a cleaner layout after this). And of course, I will need to contextualise some of the images in there instead of leaving it as a picture book.

   While it will not be done for this submission, I am interested in having a physical copy printed out for my art book once more content is added and polished. Case Press has been referred to me by both my peers and lecturers, which I hope to utilise in due time. But in the meantime, this first version of my art book will be published on Issuu for my submission.

   To wrap things up for this blog post, I still really hope to have most of the animation sketches cleaned up and finish colouring in a few scenes in (Which I have thankfully done by this point). The art book should also be brought to more satisfactory standards by this friday's submission.

The Bond of Four - Working with Rosy 2

   To wrap up things up on the title sequence itself, I am thankful that there is at least one part of the animation that is technically completed and ready to be viewed for submission, and all that is thanks to Rosy and her boyfriend Ben. There really weren't too many problems (Save for a few tiny misunderstandings between us due to our increasingly exhausted we were getting) and the design of the title sequence was done in just a few weeks. So, I realise I have only actually made one other blog post about this, and that was more than a month back when I simply mentioned what it was that I actually wanted Rosy to do... Sooooo, with our Facebook conversation as my reference, let me try to summarise what has taken place during this long period.

   Since answering the first set of questions I received from her (Which was mentioned in the first post), I eventually decided that I would preferably like to only have an ending sequence designed for my animation as it better suited the overall presentation of it. This decision came about when Cara and I were one day throwing ideas at one another when sharing with one another progress on both our projects. I received a couple more some time after once she commenced working on mine:

1. What is your plan for your audio

   (i) Would you like me to provide audio to fit on the end like Lurk or would you have that           covered?

    I would like for Luke to work on that too, but I fear that due to time constraints, we wouldn't be able to do so. ;u; Just like that time when we tried with Lurk, haha.  

   (ii) If yes, what is your plan for the sudden cut into the fight sequence audio?

   I'm pretty sure that part would be covered by Luke though? It is just this abrupt change from a seemingly peaceful and sombre atmosphere.

2. What characters would you mainly like featured in the credits? (I have had a look through your Tumblr but not sure what ones you want as the final designs) 

   Most definitely should include the 4 main characters: Aoyi (The one with the orange scarf), Hojo (The one in very loose blue robes and has heterchromia), Jubei, (The one with the sleepy expression on his face) and Date (The masked assassin), others can be added to at your choice.

3. A list of Cast and Artists? 

   There is no cast or artists, save for you, Luke and possibly your bf if he does help out with the music for the ending sequence?

   NOTE: I would hope to discuss a small change with Rosy about this as I wish to include Yiynova's involvement in this. Seeing as this was my first ever tablet monitor I have ever animated with. None of this would have been possible without their product, to be quite honest, and so giving them a small mention would be absolutely lovely.

4. Would you like me to design a typeface again like Lurk or work around a pre-made type. (Both would work in my opinion unless you want it to be like a signature)

   Both would work just fine for me too!

5. Since you would like me to only focus on an ending credit scene, what kind of duration were you thinking? (40 seconds?)

   Yeah, around 40 sec is fine.

   From then on, I simply started throwing all my concept art and sketches into the dropbox that were shared between me, her and Luke, and let her grab whatever she wanted out of there as she started working on the ending sequence. Knowing that she was also working on several other sequences for a few others, I gave her all the space she needed and didn't really badger her with too many questions until it started getting closer to the deadline. But, during that period, Rosy had also set up an Instagram account to show her progress on all these title sequences that she was working on, including my own. 

   About a week or so back during one of our tutorial sessions, I started giving more thorough feedback on how it was that I actually visualised the ending sequence, particularly when it came to the style of music. The placeholder music that she used initially was much too energetic, and so I started sending her a few sombre music pieces (Including the ending music for the Legend of Korra) as examples as to what I actually had in mind for the title sequence. And, as for the look itself, it was getting there, but again, I wanted to go for a more quiet feel than the fast paced animation she had used for the first version (Hopefully she posts that version on her own blog so you will know what I mean). My last super important request was to make sure that the title itself actually sort of popped up right after the animation itself ended on a plain black background, very much like how the title of the Lion King appeared after it's opening sequence with the birth of Simba.

   And after that, all I really needed was a png of the title she designed so that I could use it for my concept artbook... and that's the gist of it.

Extended Practice - Voice Acting 3

   Actually spent an hour or so a couple of weeks back rerecording a few lines for David's animation, as there weren't that many lines to record for, there was a lesser chance of me losing my voice by the end of that session. This time round, I decided to let David have the headphones (Again, I still find myself wondering why is it that BOTH studios only had ONE set of headphones in each of them?), making sure he listened to every single recorded line before we moved onto the next one, especially since there were volume mishaps when we were listening to them in one of the previous critique sessions. I also have this annoying tendency to read most lines far too quickly and so require way too many retakes for even the simplest of lines. I was not going to leave that studio until each line was recorded clearly enough and satisfied David and his vision for his character.

   I know I am far from being a professional voice actor (Heck, while I did try my best in those sessions and thought I sounded pretty okay then, I still felt like falling into a black hole when I heard my voice last week during our final presentation), but again, I really did enjoy myself and hope to improve myself further from here. I get so shy even when I record my own stuff for fun, but, again, I just need to keep practicing, really, especially if I really do hold an interest in this area. There are so many amazing animators (Alex Hirsch), singers (Estelle) and writers (Anthony Burch... yes, he counts!) that do such amazing voice work themselves and I really hope to be anything like them.

The Bond of Four - Some Animation Progress 3

   With the deadline drawing ever nearer, I have mainly been spending my days indoors trying to get all the simpler scenes done before friday. While the fight scenes look incredibly rough (With none of the characters being the least bit recognisable), I believe that the timing has been mainly confirmed for those scenes, and to me, that is what matters the most when it comes getting the sound design done for it.

  

   The simpler scenes on the other hand were simply left as still images in my animatic, so it was only right to not only animate them simply because they would be easier, but to also get a more accurate timing on each of them. Simpler scenes also did allow for slightly more complex shading, seeing as there were only a few frames that I needed to colour in (With thanks to After Effects and even the positioning tool in Photoshop). Though I would have to use a simpler colour style and/or scheme for scenes with more movements, and also take into account what would best suit the atmosphere and mood of that scene. 

   One such example would be the fight scenes, seeing as it takes place at night, I used that to my advantage and decided to go for a more monochromatic colouring scheme when colouring the characters, so more cool shades of blue and grey would be used instead of their actual colour schemes. Even what is apparently a grey eye looks blue in this sort of setting as shown below of the animated eye.

A simpler scene such as this allows for more complex shading and lighting.

   A faster way of blending the colour scheme of the characters with the setting they are in is to use a colour or texture overlay (Especially when there isn't any time to figure out alternative colour schemes for your characters when they are placed in scene with noticeably darker or brighter lighting, Steven Universe does this for example). I actually showed both versions to my friends one without the texture overlay on the characters and one with (Shown above), and it goes without saying that they all preferred the one with the overlay.

   I won't be able to finish this entire scene, but I attempted to at least sketch out all the animations for it instead of leaving the posted doodles in. In fact, I am going to try my best replacing all of those before submitting it in for this deadline, even if I can't finish the entire thing, it's still a lot better than leaving what has already been seen in the original animatic.

The Bond of Four - Backgrounds 2

   Whilst the original illustration had a much more 'golden' colour scheme than what I presently went for, I felt that a darker look would be more suited for such a private room, the meeting place for which Date (The assassin) meets with his Lord for whatever orders he decides to throw at him. A gold palette would have worked better for the throne room itself, and also, that palette was pretty much already taken for the forest design (Which can be seen in the previous post).

   After doing up a really quick sketch of the layout (Whilst also incorporating the two characters in there), I mainly used the shape tool for this background design and did some quick brush overs for the shading and textures. There was a little warping too, that still doesn't look all that great to me, but it's definitely better than keeping the walls completely flat. In the final version, there is a very slight arc if you look closely. I then finished up this background design with some torches on the side... nearly everyone has said that this background looks incredibly cozy, and I can live with that.

The Bond of Four - Backgrounds 1

   I started on this background ages back and wasted a lot of time messing around with it, but I suppose it also gave me the time to figure out how I should actually separate certain elements into their respective layers (Such as the tree at the very front). And in term of the style I am using, a painted look will still work, if I try to keep the line art for the animated characters as thinly done as possible (And perhaps even use other colours aside from black), I believe they will blend well together.

  Another extra little tidbit is the fact that I am trying to base the colour schemes of each background on my old illustrations (Such as using a green colour scheme for the palace gardens and a brown one for the town). In this case however, seeing as this is a completely new setting that was never in any of the original illustrations, I simply kept to the golden forest look as I had envisioned from the beginning whilst storyboarding, though it could be said that the look is also based on the one illustration I did for the author's note section as shown below, I was also hoping incorporate some petals as well into the scene. 

   The other day, Annabeth showed me a couple of features in After Effects. I can't really remember what it's called now (Thank goodness I took a screenshot and scribbled down some unreadable notes that day whilst she showed them to me) but several of these features were able to incorporate things such as rain or snow in there. Unfortunately, CS4 lacks many features that the new version has (Such as being able to rotate falling 'leaves', which can't be done as shown below), and so I will be planning to install my student trial version in hopes of getting more out of it.

The Bond of Four - Some Animation Progress 2

    I spent the last few days working on Scene 1, it should be finished by Thursday for the presentation. It was pretty late in when I realised that it would be weird to not to animate her bangs seeing as the rest of her hair was already moving with the wind. So much like what I did with Scene 8 and Ohana, I couldn't leave those bangs as it is and had to animate them too... this would have been a more noticeable detail however, so it was worth it. Lighting and colouring once again proved to be a huge pain, while I was tempted to leave her hair as a simple colour block, I eventually added in some lighting and outlined the shape of it (Mainly because all the examples I referred to made sure to outline every single thing when it came to their characters), I did however decided to take out the lighting for her bangs as I didn't think that the moonlight would really reach it.

   ... And no, I'm not going to animate her blinking, she doesn't stare down at her adversary in that pose for that long, anyway. I cannot begin to tell you how long it took me to resketch the animation for the second part, her eyes just were not cooperating with me and looked so incredibly creepy if I started at them for too long (Though it was my fault for doodling a little smile behind the fan in one frame...). I kept the fan plain without any shading or details... simply because there was really no time left to figure out how to include those details in effectively (And not just because I didn't want to).

   I had a tough time figuring out many layers of shading I needed to use, but tried my best to keep it to around 3 (The references I looked appeared to stick to that number from what I can see, particularly for more complex shading that is required in night scenes, or at least more dramatically lit ones), it was already a nightmare colouring that small bit of clothing (With its tiny bit of unnecessary lighting around the edges). 

   Overall, I couldn't help but feel that she looked incredibly... derpy in a lot of frames, no matter how many times I resketched them. But knowing I didn't have much time left, I just carried on and just started colouring and shading everything. If my peers and tutor feel that something is off with her face on Thursday, I will just try my best to fix it up some more after the deadline... And I suppose this is what I get for hating on Sailor Moon Crystal Seasons 1 and 2 when I can't even do decent close ups myself.

Don't worry, there's a rooftop there.