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 - 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.

Extended Practice - Voice Acting 2

   When recording day came, I had a surprisingly fun time. David just told me what sort of tone he had in mind for certain lines and was overall a pretty patient voice director, and only one or two lines were altered or removed completely from the script. And while I ended up losing my voice by the end of it (David ended up buying me a bottle of water halfway through), it was a great experience, putting my heart into each line and just trying to figure out what was the best pitch and whatnot. And I certainly enjoyed all the screaming I had to do for it... but, not the falling (There were scenes where Millie would faint and collapse), sometimes there's a limit on how much you need to get into these things. I actually really can't wait to hear it on the animatic this coming Thursday.

   Also, if I am required to re-record some lines after that, I certainly do not mind doing so (Obviously all for the sake of getting a job done properly)... especially since I was well aware that I was struggling with the last few lines due to losing my voice.

Extended Practice - Voice Acting 1

   While I had to sadly go back on my offer to do concept art for Becky's project (And it was going to be so fun too... I mean, concept art on a dark fairytale? Ugh... I am just so glad that she was able to get someone else to help her out with it in time) due to the amount of workload I already had for this module and PPP3 (Which I am still struggling to catch up on). I was still able to take up on David's offer to voice act for his main character in Sillie and Millie. Seeing as I recorded a song for his group's Applied Animation 2 project last year for the animated documentary project, that alone was going to make this recording process a lot easier for the two of us (I am still however baffled over the fact that there is only one headphone in that sound booth).

   It was understandable that the both of us were worried that my voice might not have suited Millie, despite my proclamations of being able to sound somewhat like Tara Strong's Bubbles, Timmy Turner and Juliet Starling, there is always that constant fear that the lines I read will not come out as naturally as I want them to. And so during the first few months, whilst David shared with me his script (Sharing some of my thoughts on what lines he should probably change for the sake of his audience and whatnot), I quickly did up a little test recording for him to see if I was still the right choice for voicing his character. And quite frankly, I was so ready to be booted off this project... only to be told that he was happy with what he had heard and that we could easily improve and tweak the rest when the day came to get the recordings done.

   I absolutely enjoy voice acting, hence why I was absolutely willing to take up on this offer when it was given to me. But all I have truly done in my free time is really simple dramatic readings from various comics, it is sadly not often that I can do over-the-top voices due to the fact that I would normally record them in the worst of locations. AKA, my own flat room where the walls are pretty paper thin, and the same goes for my home back in Singapore, where my family can apparently hear me all the way downstairs even when I would confine myself in my third-floor bedroom. And so yelling and screaming is certainly going to be a pretty new experience for me, that's for sure. Either way, I am still going to give it my all.

The Bond of Four - Working with Rosy

   I mentioned way back that Rosy will be working with me again on making a title sequence, and here's the progress so far on that.  About a week or so back, she asked me, along with a few others some necessary information needed to get the ball rolling. So, this isn't all that different to what I included in my Statement of Intent, but there's definitely some new information in here too:

1. What am I making?

A short story/teaser concept that should be around 1.5 to 2 minutes (This will be full confirmed once storyboards and an animatic are done)

I was especially inspired by these few examples (Particularly the first one):
https://vimeo.com/channels/staffpicks/124313553
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5H9KqYZXiY (First 30 seconds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5H9KqYZXiY (Updated version since the project met its goal on kickstarter)

Might be doing a little research write up on each of these examples in the future.

2. What sort of theme do I have in mind?

So, to summarise this animation, it's definitely going to be pretty… anime. I will definitely throw over a bunch of concept artwork to you that won't be in the animation itself, so there will actually be different content seen in the titles, just like in Lurk. It might be good t0 show a teaser preview of the characters themselves in the opening title (Like, don't fully reveal them, show close ups of parts of them that will make them stand out as a character each. The closing can have more stuff of scenery and whatnot?

3. What duration is the animation?

Around 1.5 minutes, that example might have been almost 3 minutes but lol, I'm not gonna kill myself like that. At most, it will be 2 minutes. Once you add the titles to it, it would definitely be around that 2min 40 sec mark, wouldn't it?

Food for Thought - Production - Music and Voice Acting

Seeing that we were an all girls team, we required a male voice actor for our Cake man, while a girl could probably pull off a prepubescent voice for Johnny (Much like how Tara Strong voiced Timmy Turner from the Fairly Odd Parents), the same obviously cannot be said for our dear narrator. From the very beginning, we wanted a voice that would either resemble the late Phil Hartman's portrayal of Troy McClure, or Tom Kenny's Narration in the Legend of Korra. And needless to say, finding someone suitable proved to be a lot harder than I initially thought.

Since the first critique session, I have been on the search for the right voice actor. For awhile I was told that one of Cara's friends would volunteer to voice him, but a little while later, due to time constraints, he ended up dropping out. While Cara informed me that her father could be a last resort of sorts, I went all out after that and emailed several talented voice actors that I have come across through Tumblr and Youtube. Sadly, I didn't receive many responses, and when I did, they were all (If not polite) rejections.

Near the end of Easter break however, during my collaboration with a student from the Leeds College of Music, fortune was finally shining down upon me when I decided to ask him whether he or any of his friends were interested at all in voice acting... I was referred to one of his friends then, whose voice suited the Cake man wonderfully (And even the Ice Cream man). It also helped that he has been incredibly prompt in sending his recordings!

While we will be using a track from the Ren and Stimpy track for the time being, Cara's friend will be composing an original piece for our animation, so that we will be able to submit it into contests after the module's deadline. As the Ren and Stimpy soundtrack is considered production music, I didn't think I would actually be able to obtain the rights to the track that I had used for the animatic (I am still however looking into this matter for future use), and so an originally composed piece is always the best way to go if possible.

Food for Thought - Production - Colour Tests and Crit

Today Anna adjusted some of the colours of the park background design while also finalising out the colour scheme of the cake cart, so that the main characters and props will be able to stand out better. Frankly, Cara and I thought that the minor change actually looked much better despite our love for saturated colours, I think the more purplish colours still works well with the rest of the background, characters and props.

In other news, during today's final critique, our peers are still questioning whether how well the textured backgrounds will go along with our cleanly cel-shaded style of the characters and interactive props, we believe that this stark contrast won't be as noticeable once things actually begin to move and will actually go along just fine with one another.

While we are going to avoid detailed shadows for the animated characters and props (And only add them in when it is absolutely necessary to the scene itself), we will add in some simple ones for stationary sections, such as a simple shadow beneath the cart.

Food for Thought - Production - Background Designing 3

And here are the backgrounds, I'm sure they will require some tweaking later on when there's time, but for now, I think they are good enough to include within the animation. I also quickly did up a greyscale and sepia version of the Industrial Revolution one for the others to see, if they prefer one of those two, I will quickly fix up a few things (Though I suppose the only issue I have with the monochromatic versions is the fact that it will be hard to see the bread and dough).

Other backgrounds that will probably need to do after this is the other side of the park, blue skies, and just some plain ones for the display of various pretty cakes that Cara and Anna will be illustrating later on, which is thankfully not that much.

Food for Thought - Production - Background Designing 2

While looking over our present storyboard, I started listing down the other backgrounds that I needed to design, aside for more minor backgrounds such as skies and perhaps the other side of the park, these are the other backgrounds that will be included in the animation. I tried to hold back on giving too much details, since they will each only appear for a very short period of time (And let's not forget that the entire thing only actually lasts for about 2 minutes).

Egyptian Background

To start off, I was pretty intent on giving each background a unique colour scheme to one another, this one was pretty easy seeing how most references I gathered have a warm, sandy colour scheme to their overall set ups. And so yellow and beige would be the main colours for the first background design.

Starting off with the base, I would then follow this floor level for the
other background designs.

And then next was the oven, while it's design will change for each setting,
its placement pretty much stays the same. The same goes for the baker
who will change in appearance, but will stay in the same place, doing
the same thing.

The fire will be animated in later on.

Not sure what those things are in the corner when I was looking
through references, they are either plates or stacks of dough... and I'm
leaning towards the latter.

Some plain pots and urns so to make the place less empty, the
simplification of certain elements is pretty much inspired by Scott Will's
own gorgeous background designs.

It won't look so empty once we throw Johnny and the baker in there.

Medieval Background

This one proved to be a lot more challenging, it took me awhile to figure out a decent enough colour scheme as compared to the Egyptian one. While not pictured here, I almost ended up going with a warm colour scheme similar to the Egyptian one, but I decided against it and started looking through more references.

I was actually already intent on using a more cool colour scheme for this one so that it would contrast to the first one, and so thankfully I was able to find some decent colour references from Disney's The Sword in the Stone, where a mixture of greys, blues, greens and purples was effectively (And beautifully might I add) used for some of their setting designs.

Pretty much the same process as the first one, painted the base, before
adding in the oven.

Only screenshot that shows when I almost went for a warmer colour scheme.

Did a number of things here, manly however I was painting in silhouettes for
a few items, such as the shelves and the dough trough.

Shelves of dough, sadly I decided to remove the trough since
there's no point really including it unless it was in full view.

I realise that the shelves took up way too much space, so
I shrank it before painting in some textures.

Oven's coming along nicely.

Decided to just go with a column, especially when considering the screen format
(Always include the least important things around the edges).

Table filled with way too many cups and bowls.

A basket to the side.

More baskets hanging on the walls.

And logs.

Industrial Revolution Background

There were several considerations for this one, even when the script was still being written months back. Seeing as the other backgrounds are actually fully coloured, it seemed like a no brainer that the same would be done with this background as well. But based on numerous illustration examples, my team mates and I actually considered making this setting monochromatic (This was mentioned in a much earlier post), it would be a cute little detail when Johnny briefly becomes grey or sepia-ish in terms of his colour scheme.

But it's also probably safer if we simply stuck to keeping everything fully coloured, what matters is that each setting is recognisable enough to the audience.

These actually got harder... took me awhile to figure out the
layout on the left side (Though a large window seems like the way
to go seeing that I already used tables and shelves for the other two).

The fully coloured version goes back to a warm colour scheme,
though this time the main colours used are brown and red,
which actually also works for the sepia colour scheme we considered.

One of the main elements that I was really set on including was
putting in a fairly simple silhouette of a smokey city at the back,
which really helps establish the setting itself.

Almost forgot to colour the background BEHIND that city though.

Wasted a lot of time trying to get these hanging doughs
to look right, in the end I erased it and drew painted it
with a cleaner brush. (FYI, I used only two brushes when
designing all the backgrounds)

Started adding in other things such as bread in front
and baskets and pots at the back (Seeing that the window
is too low to allow a table or chair).

The hanging dough looks a tiny bit better now... I will be saving that
and the bread in front as separate PNGs just in case.

MORE BREAD AND POTS.

WWF - Submission

After adding the finishing touches (Such as numbering the pages and putting in any other text... also, I quickly removed our names after rereading the brief on how your work should be submitted), it was finally time to submit this bad boy in.

The submission process went by pretty smoothly much to my surprise (Especially after all the warnings we received from others), I was just expecting to submit our entry as a zipped folder, but apparently if you were to submit images, you would have to upload and title them individually, which does make sense considering how strict they are on how many images you are allowed to submit in the brief. It also felt a little weird submitting JPEG images, especially since I was so familiar with PDFs (Hey, they print out better too), but I got use to it eventually.

Even the payment process was not much of an issue, and soon enough, we had everything submitted in less than half an hour.

With this done and over with, we just hope that there will be no issues with our entry when it is finally presented to the judges. And right now, it is once again time to move on and finish our other projects.

WWF - Finishing Touches

Anna and I spent the last few days finishing up our entry for the WWF competition, while she was drawing and hand making several pieces (Such as the fishing net and lumberjack) and sending them over to me, I was spending the first day gathering some clearer and larger images (Since some of the photos I used for the final critique were actually a tad more blurry than I wanted them to be), while also cleaning and editing them all into PNGs that I could then easily put together later on.

Seen here are one of the photos Anna took for me that we could use as trees.

Some were definitely a lot harder to clean up as compared to others.

For some reason food colouring on the second photo turned out a lot greener
as compared to the first photo, so that needed to be digitally altered to match.

The fishing net took quite a bit of time considering how delicately thing the threads
were, but it was worth it!

With Anna's work, this definitely looks so much better as compared to the piece
we presented during our last Responsive session.

I think she did an absolutely wonderful job on this net, she had poured her sweat
and tears into it, and it clearly shows.

Also now and then, with all the images I placed in, despite the fact that I rasterised them, the file size would reach nearly 2GB, slowing down my laptop performance, and so now and then I had to go back and see if I could merge any of the other works to bring down the file size, hoping that I will not have to go back to alter them later on.

While Anna said that we should just go with the hands I made...

I honestly think the new pair she drew out looks much better, all I did was darken
them a tiny bit more.

I also showed Anna an alternative where a darker table surface is used for the slides, while I suppose it stands out a bit more (Well for this slide at least)... Anna and I believed that the lighter table surface still works better for our concept, plus it might hurt some people's eyes when looking at the second one for too long.

We also decided to add a little summary page to better explain our concept, it will be submitted in as a supporting item, a much shorter summary was put into the entry form, and hopefully this still isn't that wordy to them...

Food for Thought - Production - Background Designing 1

That rough storyboard also allowed me to roughly count how many backgrounds I needed to design for the animation, with two directions that I felt that we could possibly take them in. Design elements that would be retained in both directions will be the fact that there will be a tiny bit of animation inserted into them to make them a little less static.

The first idea would be the more challenging one where we attempt to retain the same art style throughout for all of the background designs while the second one would allow me to lightly replicate the art styles used for the various time periods (Such as a hieroglyph for the egyptian setting, a lithograph for the medieval setting and so on), which I think would work better for a chronology on any sort of subject matter, especially during that scene where Johnny is being placed in several different time settings when the history of cake is lightly discussed upon.

The design process for these backgrounds turned out to be trickier than I initially expected, various considerations had to be made, such as whether the backgrounds should merely present the time period itself, or whether kitchens should also be incorporated into each one of them, the latter was a problem when it came to the background design for the Industrial Revolution, I wanted to show all the smoke that would come out from factories and initially wanted it to be an outdoors setting, and so it was a problem if the other settings (Egypt and Medieval) took place in kitchens.

Another issue was once again attempting to use the same art style for all the background designs, especially when it came to designing the Egyptian setting, it was just a lot tougher visualising something for it as compared to the other settings, while still making it recognisable enough to the viewers (Which I felt would work better if they were each given their own unique art style). And if we were to go the other way round by simply designing settings that showed what time period it is, it doesn't seem as effective without showing something of relation to baking.

Again I did some really, really rough sketches, the decision is up to my teammates after this.

Another interesting element that I decided to retain is keeping the oven to the right, other parts of each setting can change a little however (Like other people in the kitchen will be doing other things such as rolling and flattening dough, mixing mixtures, etc.), so the composition wouldn't be the same for all of them. The colour scheme will most definitely be differently from one another as well (With more vibrant colours for the Egypt design, warmer colours or black and white lining for the Medieval one, and something more sepia for the Industrial Revolution one).

'Slightly' clearer sketches.