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.

The Bond of Four - Some Animation Progress

   Just some animation progress for several different scenes.

The Bond of Four - Scene 1-2 - Progress

   A part of me really wishes that I actually owned one of those Hannya masks so that I could actually get the perspective right on this thing. For the majority of yesterday, I spent most of my time trying to get the perspective of that mask right, his right arm to look right and figuring out what style of colouring, shading and lighting to use (I based it on references from the Legend of Korra, Berserk and Claymore). But either, way, I say give this one more day before I am finally done with this scene, it was meant to be one of the simpler scenes (Aside from the amount of detail) and I really do need to hurry up and move onto the next scene. I just need to do a few more touch ups on his figure and work on the background (Which I will probably be separating into two separate layers (Cloud and night sky) to give a tiny but more depth for a seemingly still looking scene.

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?

The Bond of Four - Tumblr Blog's Up

   As mentioned in my statement of intent, I will also be posting most of my concept art, animation tests and whatnot on a Tumblr side blog I created for myself, I obviously named it after the series itself (And I am pretty glad that no one had actually taken it).  It seems useful seeing as this will be a series that I hope to continue even after this module ends. There obviously isn't much going on right now (Seeing as I was focused more on the research side in the previous two weeks, and still sorta am, actually), but things will start picking up eventually. I will probably pick a nicer theme for it too eventually, which really won't take long once I get into it. Hopefully, I can get that bit done tomorrow.

   ... This is the shortest post I have made in my entire life.

Food for Thought - Production - Marketing Materials

I came in early today in hopes of printing out all the DVD Covers, and booklets for Cara, Anna and I, little did I know that I would be spending the next hour or so wasting quite a bit of money attempting to print out the DVD covers in a suitable size for the casing. Strangely enough, Cara's original file turned out a little too smile, and so I made numerous attempts in trying to fix it, despite what seemed like a proper template, the damn thing still wouldn't fit...  until what was possibly the 20th attempt did it manage to fill out the casing decently, it wasn't perfect, but at least it is better than the very first one I had printed out.

The booklets weren't too troublesome at least, especially after my experience with printing my project report for Responsive, the ordering of the pages was easily done. I did do a few tiny tweaks based on Annabeth's feedback (That being the removal of the black border on the back page), and so printed them out a second time.

Below you will see all the failed attempts on the right, and one the left, you will see what I deemed to be alright enough for submission.

At least the poster shouldn't be too much of a hassle to print out...

Food for Thought - Distribution - Animation Progress 5

So I helped out at the last minute on a few more things, seeing that there was no way that Anna and Cara could finish cleaning and colouring everything, I spent the entire night trying to at least neaten the last 9 files that they have yet to work on, so hopefully these slightly neater sketches can still be used for the animation. Seeing that Cara was already working so hard to edit the animation as well as work on the promotional items, I then helped to colour at least one scene as seen below.

As I coloured the cleaned up lines, I was however a little saddened to find out that the clean up took away quite a bit of the exaggeration that was in the original sketches I did... I will take note of this for future projects however. I also actually wanted to fix up some of their expressions in the clean up versions, but it was going to be a little complicated trying to ask them to pass me their files just so I can fix the eyes or mouth, I could probably ask about it another time if we are still interesting in submitting this for competition.

Food for Thought - Production - Animation Progress 4

So I was a ninny and realised that mov files would be too big to upload up here, but I believe these two will be enough to show how the lip syncing animation went, I will however try to include some more scenes on my submission disc.

I managed to finish sketching all the key scenes this morning (I had to sadly exclude the hop and spin scene due to its complexity and its need for lip syncing as well, but I believe we can still connect the other two scenes together smoothly without it), and as you can see here, there are numerous work files on both my hard disk and dropbox account. They have all also been ordered properly for our reference (And for my OCD) so that it would easier to put them all together later on as one animation.

Now if you will excuse me, I still have other tasks to attend to, despite how badly destroyed my hand by now...

Food for Thought - Production - Animation Progress 3

As mentioned in the previous animation progress post, I soon enough went back to finishing up this scene, there were a lot of subtle and jerky animations I added in aside from the lip syncing, such as Cake Man's sudden movements and Johnny's own startled reaction when he suddenly cuts him off. 

There were some complications with the posing of Cake Man, as I felt that he didn't have anywhere to lean his arms over based on Anna's cart design, and so I made do with him bending rather unnaturally over like some snake. I will try to fix this scene before we submit it in for competitions if it bothers anyone when watching it.

I simply did the icing animation, Anna will be drawing the hand and icing bag while Cara will animate it to follow the motions of my animation on After Effects. I made sure to give a few pauses in between, especially when the details of the train are added in.

Scenes such as this focused more on the transitions of facial expressions, they were simple to do and also quite fun. Hopefully I will have the confidence to animate more complex expression in the future. I still can't say the same for my turning animations however, as you notice how warp they tend to get sometimes...

The running cycle took awhile to figure out, especially since I had trouble getting use to drawing Johnny's incredibly slender body shape (If you noticed in the original walking cycle, I gave him a much more bean shaped torso), as well as the placement of his arms. The original showed them much higher in the air, but when I started drawing in the details, they just looked really off to me, and so I had to reposition them.

The panting animation wasn't too bad... it could be better, but it will have to do for now, I made sure to label what frames to duplicate, so that Anna didn't have to clean up 4 of the same frames and waste time doing so.

I thought that this would turn out horribly, and while it could probably use a bit more squash and stretch (Mainly squash), I think this scene turned out pretty well, I am also once again please with how his expressions turned out.

This was probably one of my better turning animations, his head doesn't horribly warp like it normally does in the other sketches. Also I realise I will never draw his glasses exactly as how they should be in Anna's references...

I reused the first walk cycle and simply changed his expression. I do hope however that Anna or Cara made the necessary changes to the first walk cycle, as he is humming in that scene, his mouth should be closed and not open. And since I don't have the fully coloured file for that animation, this matter is all up to them.

I was trying to connect together as many scenes as possible for this one, and it definitely took a little while to finish up, seeing as there was quite a bit of motion going on when compared to the other scenes.

Seeing that Johnny was going to stay pretty still throughout these time travelling segments, we all agreed to add some basic animation for each setting. Thanks to Cara, each baker would do something differently and in a way would connect to one another (Eg, baking in th Egyptian setting, taking out the baked goods in the Medieval settings, and finally setting the baked goods onto the table).

Fire glow animation.

Baker and smoke animation.

Food for Thought - Distribution - A Mixture of Things 4

I volunteered to draw up some new portraits for the crew biography, and once again, as there wasn't much time left and I still needed to continue animating after, I had to scrap the pixel portrait idea (And scrap the idea of even fully colouring them) and instead did these really quick sketches for each of us (As you can see I sort of gave up on my own portrait). But anyway these work better than the original doodle I did at the very beginning of this team up, seeing that all of us are sort of facing forward this time round.

Last night, Cara and Anna started working on our promotional items, seen here are the poster concepts, which I initially mistook for the DVD cover. As mentioned before, those textured backgrounds I had quickly painted up for the title cards can also be applied here. So while it appears that it looks like there is a lot of negative space now, particularly on Johnny's side, it will look fine once some textures are applied (Just call me the Texture Queen...).

And here is the gorgeous DVD cover Cara did, I was admiring it for far too long last night when she had sent it over to me for my opinion... While black might be a tiny bit dull for the text, I believe it remains the best choice for the sake of readability and clarity. Other than that, all she will have to do later on is simply replace some of the images on the backside of the cover, and we all should be able to print them out by tomorrow for our submission!

And here is the crew biography page, we decided to add silly descriptions below our names and roles to go with the overall silly and playful tone we already have for our overall project. Seeing that we all practically played key roles, I believe none of us specifically took on the role of the director, and so that role was not listed for any of us.

Later on, I will be putting together a little concept art booklet where most of our developmental work will be featured in, which would go great along with all the other promotional items for our animation.