Minor Project: Figuring out Animatic

To help me with my animatic, I have gone ahead and spilt up the rerecording into sections to help me figure out how I will go about animating my character for each scenario. Getting everything I have in in my head written down really rough, might help me figure it all out and find what will work best in my animatic. Spent a couple of hours talking to younger brother and we come up with some ideas, some are a little crazy but maybe that's what I need, it is a child imagination and anything is possible after all. So this is what I have got, feeling more happy now and ready to go back to my animatic and not overwhelmed with all my ideas i had in my head. 

Recording break down.docx

One thing I have settled on is that my animation is not going to be jumping from reality into Tyler dream world but instead starts of in reality but when asked what do you want to be when you grow up we enter Tyler's imagination, him acting it all out, then after the last question is asked we return to reality.

Any feedback or any other ideas are gratefully welcomed ...

Minor Project: Choosing a Font

A quick look at different fonts for my animation and branding. Going for a child's writing style,  here are the best ones I found and out of them all I kind of like number 7 and 5. 

Also I had an idea of actually having kids write my tittle out and using that. So I asked the class where I collect my recordings from in the beginning when they have the time will they be able to to have each child write out the title.  At the moment I only have three because they are on half term but will be getting some more when they go back.  I like this idea better,  of having an original font, at the moment I kind of like number 3 and I think its the font I am going to use in my animatic. 

Minor Project: Character Design Progress

In terms of structure for my character I kind of think it is nearly there. After my tutorial yesterday, and some pointers of what works and what doesn't with my previous designs. This design is a combination of several of my previous designs. The body of number 1 and the top part of the body of number 2. And the head of number 3 for the moment as it still needs work but  the reason why I choose this out of all the other designs  is because it shows the type of design I  am going for with the hair, really ruff and messed up to add to the personality of the character. 

With the structure I have at the moment I have been looking at types of clothing for my character. I know my character is going to be designed twice because he needs two sets of clothing, one is his uniform which is what he starts and ends up in and then the football kit which he wears when he is own little dream world. I know from the recording that he is going to be in a football kit more specifically west ham kit .The image below is a couple of experiments  of the different style of kits. 

At the moment I not to sure to stick with the black or white or to have some colour in my animation, so I think when refining my character to looking at experiment and seeing if adding flat colour to the designs works. Also maybe adding colour will make it a little easier for the audiences to recognise what team he want to play for straight away. Also Alan suggested maybe experiment with adding texture to the design  making it feeling like actual children drawings. So some stuff to experiment with my refining my design. 

Minor Project: Animatic Development

This week has been about dissertation and character but here is a little development to my animatic, still needs a lot of work done to it. But one thing I have figured out is that I am gonna stick with my animation just being about Tyler and his answer. 



Here are a few initial head design also, looking for the cute factor, I think number 3 is but still gonna develop these ideas further. 

Minor Project: First Draft of Animatic

The next step for me is to go ahead and start the animatic. At the moment I am still undecided with whether to stick with my animation just being about Tyler's recording or to have my animation be about several recordings. I know there are many different ways that I could go with Tyler's recording and there is alot to work with but I also like the idea of having variety of answers to see the differences in them.  So I am going to make very ruff and quick animatic for both, to see how the animation would play out for either one. Then I will decided which way my animation will go, taking the animatic to develop further to improve. 

So here is the first 40 seconds of the animatic for just Tyler's recording, 

Also I did a quick sketch of Tyler character so that I have something to base my character on for the animatic. In terms of my character, I am going to work on designing him bit by bit, the face, structure, clothing etc. I defiantly know that I am going to stick with simple shapes and basic line, like my previous design experiment, for my overall visual. 

Minor Project: Experimenting With the Other Recordings

After Choosing my first character Tyler and his recording, I have experimented with seeing how Tyler's answer would sound with other recordings I collected. I decided to just concentrate on the recordings of the girl for the time being, so that I will have at least one of each gender. Kind of a comparison of what boys and girls at that age want to be. The one that I think works really well with Tyler's recording is the popstar recording (Isabell), but I also kind of like the Hairdresser one also. 

I know at the moment each video is about 3 minutes roughly but I still want to experiment with seeing how adding a third character would add to the animation. Its a matter of just experimenting with the recordings until I get the right fit. 

Minor Project: First Character Chosen

For my first character, I am defiantly going with is Tyler  and his answers for my animation. His answers give me alot to work with, with how I could animate him and he was the best recording I collected. Below is an edited version of his answer with my voice edited out. The only problem with Tyler's  answers is that his interview goes on for about 2 and half minutes so I will have to find a way that I can cut it down without losing any of the best bits.  Which means alot of playing around with the recording till I find the best result.

Also in the video there are spaces were the other two characters would be answers the question. At the the moment, I am editing the other recordings I have, then I will experiment with them, seeing which ones works best with Tyler's answers, to give me a variety of characters for my animation. 

In terms of Tyler's answers, the next step is to start designing  a character for the voice, which I am looking forward too..

Minor Project: Narrowing my choice of answer's

I have narrowed down my choices of about 20 answers to 8, these where the ones that stood out to me. These where the answers that hat made me laugh but also have personal qualities that I could use when designing the character and animating . 

In the answers, I noticed that the boys were the more confident in their answers and would go off track with their answers and start talking about something totally different. Which gives me a bit to work with.  

Out of the 5, the one that stands out the most is Tyler's answer, that is because I can hear he is impatient when he is answers the questions, as if I have asked him before. But I also like the way he is confident to go off track with the answers and start talking about something totally different. 

But the girls are totally different in the way they answers their answers they were shy but knew what they wanted to be, they are totally different to the boys which gives  variety, to my choice. 

Minor Project: Character Design Improvements

After some advice from Alan about my previous character design,  I went back and work a little bit more on the design. The previous design was still not simply enough I will still adding details that were not needed, and the shape was a little off. But after some changes, I can now see the difference and it looks much better. There might be some little tweaks need , but have been staring at it too much for today, to notice them, so will go back tomorrow and see.  

This might not be my final character design, but know I can now see how I am going to design the rest of my characters. I just need to remember that everything needs to be simple when design my characters. Cant wait to start the rest :)

Minor Project: Begining of Character Design

Today I started, looking at designing my characters, I haven't yet chosen the final answers I will use yet. But I the one that stuck out from listen to them all, was the ballerina answer. So I decided to give it ago at designing a character to help me with decided how I was going to go about creating my final characters etc. It really helped, I know can see how simple shapes and lines can work for a character. Its early days but I can see potential 

Also I decided to look at adding colour but in comparison I think the line drawing works much better, and with colour it takes away from the line art. But on thing I did do was look at maybe be having it seem as of a child has coloured the character in them self, which I thought worked much better then block colours.  

Next is to choose my final three /answers/voiceover, so I can start designing the characters.  

Minor Project: All Answers Together

So here are all the the answers I have gathered altogether, I decided to put them into separate videos, as it added up to nearly 20 Minutes altogether. Now its just choosing the best three, which is not as easier as I thought it would going to be...

Minor Project: Gathering Stories Part One

Yesterday afternoon spent the day collecting stories of what children want to be when they grow up. Some of there answer were amusing and a little strange, which is a good thing, makes it easier to choose the best.  A lot of editing is need, because there is a lot of sounds in the back, they I couldn't do nothing about when recording but in some of the recordings it works nicely, sound like I am sitting in a classroom asking the questions. Here a the first few, the rest will follow soon after being edited, then I will put everything all together when all finished. Then it will picking the best three to base character around.     

Minor Project: Project Update

After my second tutorial yesterday, I feel a lot better about my project, and a lot least confused in terms of how my animation was going to play out in terms of story. Because I have these voice over, and a visual style I wanted but no actually story to put them into. So far in terms of how the animation will play out I have:

That it is going to be set in a primary school classroom/library, with three totally different character and three different answers, taking it in turns to answer question on what they want to be when they grow up. It will play out with each character answer the question one after each other, so that the viewer can see the variety in there answers, with even the character acting it out when they are explaining it to the viewer. 

This is really ruff but after Monday when I have all three chosen voice overs,  I will be able to sit down and actually start developing this further. 

One thing I have done is  gone back  and re-write my project proposal.

Minor Project Proposal

One thing I have decided out of the voice recordings so far, I decided to go forward and think about creating a character for the ballerina answers. Out of all of them, I personal think their are a lot of personal qualities to the voice over that I could use when designing my character. From the voice over I think that the character would be, cute, quiet shy, girly, adorable, graceful.   

This might change though depending on what other answers I will get on Monday though. But for now doesn't help to just start getting some design done.

Also I have been watching some of the videos of the Kids say the funniest things on YouTube, and the video below I thought I would share, as it did make me giggle with some of their answers to when you grow up what would you like to be :)

Minor Project: First attempt at gathering answers

This afternoon I spent some time asking several children what is it that want to be when they grow up. I honestly at first didn't think it would be so hard, but after the first couple of chats I realised that I would have to ask some more question about what it was that they want to be, if I want to gather another research to help with my project. So out of ten children I have put the best ones that I thought had potential into a video, after so quick editing (sorry for my voice ) This is what I have got so far..... 

Here are a few pictures of what some of them wanted to be when they grow up: 

Tarry 6yrs old

Rockstar

Mia 7yrs old

Rockstar

Shreeya 6yrs old 

Hairdresser 

Connie 6yrs old

Fireman 

Koyin 7yrs old

Nurse

Gemma 6yrs old

Hairdresser

Altogether I don't think it was a successful trip but it wasn't unsuccessful trip at the same time cause what I have gathered today is a start and I will be spending the whole day on Monday at my old primary school gathering as many answers and drawings as possible. Maybe I should re-think about how I should go about asking the question to get as many useful  answers as possible, something to think about by then.