Food for Thought - Production - A Mixture of Things 2

About two days back, Cara started working on more polished up title cards to replace the ones that I had quickly done up for the final critique session. I was fine with the layout and adored the colour choices and adorable illustrations, but I felt that one thing was missing...

When I suggested that textures of sorts could help make these title cards stand out a little more, Cara said that she would need my assistance in that area (Seeing that she does not have as much experience in creating messy works as me), and so, quickly as possible, I messed around with a few brushes within my arsenal and created this textured background and a pink version of it.

 

With some alterations that Cara did (By making the colours a little less dark and saturated), I honestly thought that it looked better now, especially since it matches the rest of the animation! I was also actually thinking of using the same background for a later scene that showcases all the beautiful cakes, so that it actually links to these title cards.

In the end, we decided to go with the pink one, we might however use the blue background for one of the animation scenes later on.

Anna stepped in to polish it up a bit more.

For a close up scene, Cara did up these adorable gingerbread man illustrations, while I once again suggested giving them a painted look (Much like those detailed still/close up shots you see in shows such as Ren and Stimpy and Spongebob Squarepants), Cara once again was unfamiliar in using such a style, and seeing as we didn't have much time left, decided to leave it as it is for our module submission.

I did however quickly do up a table texture that will be use for the icing scene later on as Cara ever so sweetly asked me to (Seriously though, Cara is the biggest sweetheart to work with, and I'm still giggling over the fact how we both constantly apologise to one another as we worked).

Food for Thought - Production - A Mixture of Things 1

I did quite a few things over the past two days, and so I believe another little progress report is in order. I will however try to keep things as brief as possible seeing that there are surely many more write ups to come. I needed to adjust the park background for Cara, seeing that it would not repeat itself properly on After Effects, needless to say it took a little while trying to get it look anywhere near right (At least 3-5 attempts), and so I will definitely have to be more careful next time when designing such grounds or walls for future 2D animations.

While Cara and Anna were colouring and cleaning up as many scenes as they possibly could before putting together the final animatic, I continued with sketching out the rest of the animating. I found myself doing a lot of organising too so that we wouldn't get too confused over all the animation files that we shared through our Dropbox accounts (Once Anna had finished cleaning up a scene, I would quickly remove the original file, I am even numbering so that the scenes are all in order).

Having cut out and simplified numerous scenes, I do pray that I will be able to finish sketching out the animations in time and given my mates enough time to clean and colour them all (Again, I will be more than happy to help colour anything later on).

I had a really rough idea on how the title cards would look like (Well at least when it comes to the colour scheme), and so I quickly threw out something to go with the animatic. I am sure a lot of changes will be made later on, but for now, we at least have a starting point that we can easily improve on as we progress.

It's suppose to be CLAPRW but eh, no one will notice.

Animation progress will be written about in a separate post, so see you then!

Title Cards Research

From the very beginning, seeing as our animation short is inspired mainly by cartoons from around the 1990s (Though I suppose we are also including inspiration from works that date all the way back to the 50s), we felt that title cards was the way to go about in opening and ending our short, as opposed to lengthier title sequences (Though perhaps the only real difference is whether they will be animated or not).

While I believe that I did some fairly similar research for the last Applied Animation module, here is my brief research on title cards, which I believe will allow us to better develop our own for our "animated documentary".

Each episode tends to get their very own unique title card, aside from an illustrated piece that connects to the plot itself, the designers tend to play around with colours, art style, layouts and of course typography, as you look at the examples below, you will notice that they tend to avoid using the same type of font for each title card, and would specially design them so that it would suit their respective episodes.

Tom And Jerry

 

One of the earliest examples that came to mind was from the Tom and Jerry series, while the Chuck Jones era remains one of my most favourite T&J eras, it was definitely the Hanna Barbera era that had the loveliest title cards for their episodes. As mentioned earlier, the designers would play around with the designs, making sure to keep these designs simple enough so that they were not too busy, while still remaining appealing enough to keep the audience interested.

I especially liked the designs that would feature silhouettes of the two main characters (Such as the ones above), 

The Fairly Odd Parents

For the earlier episodes featured in Oh Yeah! Cartoons, the title cards for the Fairly Odd Parents were actually given some simply animations (Such as a wand sparking or a character simply floating up and down), when the series was picked up however, one of the lesser known changes made to the original formula were the now stationary title cards used (Which is honestly understandable since it was not the most important of aspects within the series), this isn't to say however that it makes them any duller.

Much like the rest of the show, these title cards have always used incredibly bright and vibrant colour palettes. While their title designs do change now and then to fit the illustrations, they all do seem a a bit closer to one another in terms of style as compared to the titles used in the Tom and Jerry shorts. There is always a whacky and warped sort of structure when it came to their typography to match the overall cartoony tone of the show.

Adventure Time

Possibly the most recent example out of all of these (Seeing that these cards are also done in an era catering specifically to HD formats) , the Adventure Time series has always been known for their deeply thought out title card designs, with various well known artists being hired over the years to illustrate them. As compared to other present shows (Like Regular Show and Steven Universe, that tends to reuse the same sequence with some minor adjustments made to them now and then), Adventure Time is one of the few shows at the moment that still uses different cards for each episode.

I also felt that the painted style that is so often used for these cards relates to our choice of art style for our own title cards (And backgrounds), though it is not to say that Adventure Time was the only series that uses such a style for their title cards. Shows such as Ren and Stimpy, Ed, Eddy and Eddy and Rocko's Modern Life tend to take advantage of such a style for their stills, and it is notable that the supposedly more detailed and painted style is used and making something just a little more dramatic (Eg, Spongebob Squarepants). 

And seeing that these are normally done for stills, it would make sense to take advantage in adding in more details and making a more complex sort of illustration for the audience. Aside from that however, the tone tends to vary from one card to the other, much like the show and it's incredibly random and varied tone in storytelling. As you can see above, some have a much more fantasy-ish tone to them while others are done in more muted if not monochromatic colours, such as this one:

Things just tend to vary a lot when it comes to this series.

Dexter's Laboratory

Much like The Fairly Odd Parents, Dexter's Laboratory also had a couple of title cards with simple animations, but were only ever done for a few episodes in the earlier seasons (The dodge ball episode especially is one of the most memorable episodes within the series). 

The styles use tend to vary for this series, some title cards are done in a more painted style, while others are done in the same style as the rest of the show, one thing they all tend to have in common however is the simplicity of their designs. They are still able to present a fairly strong concept without having to throw into much details as Adventure Time does with their own title cards. And for that, I really do like these simpler title cards as compared to far more detailed one (Especially when you also consider the duration for how long these cards tend to be shown).

My Life as a Teenage Robot

 

I always found My Life As A Teenage Robot series to be one of the most aesthetically pleasing of cartoons, and not surprisingly, I also found myself holding a deep appreciation for their title cards.  They honestly look like something done by graphic designers as compared to illustrators (Don't get subjective with me here...), as the characters presented in them are incredibly stylised. Namely, the designers seem to play around a lot more with silhouettes and lines (Much like Tom and Jerry), with art deco seeming to be one of their main influences in terms of the overall art direction.

The title cards for this series have a stylishly retro look about them (As mentioned before), that frankly matches the overall style that is used for the rest of the series, even the colours used are slightly muted and does with this retro-ish style (I also get some rather Jessica Hische vibes with some of these cards).